Haircuts

Woah frantic Friday afternoon blog post! As usual, Ayla’s home with me today, which, despite my occasional griping about it, is an unparalleled blessing for which I’m really, really grateful.

We spent the morning (i.e. 6:30 – 9, because you can’t really do anything outside the house at those hours) crying and throwing little tantrums. Except I was fine, so really it was Ayla. She does this hilarious thing where she puts her hands up by her chest like a tiny T-Rex and then flails them up and down. But she takes offense if you laugh while she’s crying, and bows her forehead down the the ground and makes more gurgling noises.

Then I decided we’d go to my mom’s house for breakfast; it took me 45 minutes to get Ayla ready to go (‘No socks!’, ‘Only socks!’, ‘Pink hat!’, ‘No haaattt!’, ‘Onlnnmly socks!’) but we finally made it. After refusing to look at her grandma for a while, she finally cheered up after eating some scrambled eggs. Should’ve guessed.

Then we did groceries at Target and visited Ayla’s ‘babies’, who live in an open box on the third shelf of the babies aisle in the toy section, cost $2.53 each, and are perfunctorily diverse (light, dark-ish, darkest). The other moms there mostly just talk on their cell phones about last night’s episode of ‘Housewives’, which is either Desperate Housewives or Real Housewives of (Insert Rich Place Here). I’m assuming the latter, since, sadly, I’ve seen enough of it to take an educated guess. It was Kyle’s fault, if you’re wondering; she’s so mean to her sister.

I, on the other hand, take it as a form of meditation, in which I force myself to do nothing, zen-like, while Ayla gives different things ‘haircuts’.

I can’t decide if watching her play by herself in an empty toy aisle is depressing. If we lived in Europe, I think, we’d be at a public outdoor urban space interacting with other people and learning tolerance etc. On the other hand, any outdoor urban spaces around here are under a cold weather advisory, and wind chills of 25 degrees below zero aren’t that tolerant.

Still, I promise myself in summer we’ll skip the babies and hit the park instead. Though I doubt the skin tones there will be as evenly heterogeneous. Perhaps the overheard phone conversations will be more pleasant. Kyle!