The cuteness

Daddy: "I just can't get enough of my Elker Pelker!"
Ellie: "Thank you, Daddy. I can't get enough of myself either."


Ellie: "Look, Daddy! My dolly is cute!"
Daddy: "But my Ellie is cuter.
Ellie: "Yes. I am very cute."


Ellie to Mommy: "My dolly is going to come to Mass with us. But she is very quiet. She is much quieter than your son."

JK Rowling, step aside

So my kid wrote a book. (Thank you to her sitter for recording it for her. You're like Milton's daughters. Truly.)

It's a book about a dragon. That would be charming, except she named the dragon . . . wait for it . . . Elisabeth. That's right. My kid thinks I'm a dragon.

It's okay, though, because she makes a point of noting that this is a "nice dragon." In fact, she's such a nice dragon that she rescues a little girl named Eleanor and a little boy named Matthew. Together, the three of them go on to rescue other little children. 

And the best part? (Sorry. **SPOILER ALERT**)

THE DRAGON DOESN'T EAT THE CHILDREN!

Given its inauspicious start, the story ends about as well as I could've hoped. Stay tuned for a sequel, in which the dragon has a really crappy morning and DOES eat the children. Perhaps Matty will survive to dictate that one. If he ever starts talking.

Struggles

I continue to wonder what it takes to "offer it up." Clearly I have gotten no further than to have posted the desire to know earlier in the summer. But I wonder if it doesn't have something to do with recognizing when I've been had but refusing to accept the spiritual results of defeat. In my case, that means not responding to my child's fixations and tantrums and attitude problems and general unpleasantness in kind. (Not that I fixate in response to her fixations, but I certainly can have a bad attitude.) I can't do those things alone. I have to seek strength from Our Lord for it. So I have to give him the situation either to fix or to make bearable. 

I have to offer it up? 

Yes, that's most certainly part of it. Now if I could just figure out the part about offering it up as a sacrifice rather than a prayer request, that would be awesome. 

In the meantime, I will have to figure out how to deal with a screaming, raging, hitting, slapping, biting toddler without wanting to do the same! 

But this will tide me over: