Day Three Hundred Forty-Five

I think people who worked from home in the Before Times will tell you that children are not to be seen or heard from during meetings, but hahahahalolz, we're in the COVID times. The children have nowhere to go. That means that Mila occasionally makes an appearance during a Very Important Work Meeting.

Before I switched jobs, I could GUARANTEE she would show up when I was talking to certain people. She apparently knew their voices? And wanted to be seen by them? Switching who I interact with on a day-to-day basis has messed the kid up. She doesn't know who exactly she wants to be best friends with. One of these days she's going to figure out who else has a kid around her age who wants to visit and then it will be CHAOS. The children will take over.

I guarantee it's coming. There are two potential co-worker kids who could become Mila's next best friend. It's just a matter of the timing being just right.

All of that is to say, sometimes Mila REALLY has to ask me a question and it can't wait and she is going to interrupt. We're working on learning to have a little patience and wait turns and all of that, but I'm coming down on the side of being okay with the brief interruptions. I certainly don't mind when someone from my team has a kid in their lap, so my own kid should be able to assert herself as more important than the work thing every once in a while. I can still do my job, even when she's there. So. Interrupt. Sometimes. It's fine.

Priorities and that.

In the past week, Mila has declared priorities to be a thing I don't necessarily agree with. For reasons I do not pretend to understand, she has had multiple questions for me that had to be answered with the utmost of urgency.

1. What's in our attic? Seriously, she had to know IMMEDIATELY, which is fun because there's nothing in our attic but insulation and dead bugs. It's not a real attic, after all. It's a crawl space.

2. Which tutu should she wear to dance class ... IN FIVE HOURS? Seriously, it was an urgent question and she super didn't care that class was hours away or that I really don't care what she wears to dance class.

3. Could I please put a Hedwig t-shirt on my shopping list? Monday at 9:00 am when I won't be going to any stores until Friday is definitely the right time for that question. 

4. How many days is it until spring? We've talked about this one and the answer is always, "Go ask the Alexa" so I don't know why she thought I would suddenly answer such a question.

5. Should she have a chocolate cake or a vanilla cake FOR HER NINTH BIRTHDAY. I don't know what happened to her seventh or eighth birthdays. We're planning her ninth, apparently.

I am, perhaps, beginning to understand just a tiny bit why my parents answered nearly every one of my questions with, "Children are to be seen and not heard."