Counting down the days until Beth’s thirteenth birthday with a few reposts from the archives.

Originally posted: Aug 6, 2001, Beth’s age: 4

Title: You’re Never Too Young

Beth started the day, like nearly every other weekday, at 6 am. Although this is not out of the ordinary, getting up any earlier than 8 am is inherently bad. I’m neither looking for, nor do I expect any sympathy from those of the medical persuasion, but I think we all can agree to this in principle.

From there, Beth went to school and suffered through a long day. When she arrived, she discovered her teacher would not be there. Instead, she had a substitute – which is almost never a good thing. She didn’t get in a nap which is definitely never a good thing.

Tired from a lack of sleep, and already weary from suffering through a substitute teacher, Cheryl picked her up early to go to the dentist. It was her first time with the poke, prod, scrape, and polish routine. When the pain in her mouth was still around an hour later, we called on our good friend Motrin.

Not until later that night, when Beth was on the potty struggling with something too gross to describe, Beth pitifully announced: “Mommy, I’m having a bad day.”

Counting down the days until Beth’s thirteenth birthday with a few reposts from the archives.

Originally posted: Feb 26, 2000, Beth’s age: 2.5

Title: Beth Finds New Ways to Get Into Trouble

A little while ago, Beth decided she didn’t like having to wait on us to get her food for her. She is, as you know, a big girl now. She is capable of many things, including opening doors, especially the pantry door. Beth subsequently learned the joys of getting her own food when she is hungry. This lead to Beth getting all kinds of things out of the pantry, including things we wanted her to eat, as well as those we didn’t.

Being the logical, thinking parents that we are, we decided to put a stop part of this behavior, while still encouraging her independence. We merely took the things that we didn’t want her to eat and put them on a higher shelf.

Being the logical, thinking child that she is, Beth figured she could fetch the broom and use its handle (or for that matter anything that might extend her reach) to poke items she is not supposed to have (candy and the like) off of the upper shelves.

While part of me was upset seeing this take place so soon after we moved all of that food, I had to suppress an urge to laugh out loud, thinking to myself, “that’s my girl!”