Emma Kelly is doing her best to convince me that she’d just LOVE to give up the only home she’s ever known and move into an apartment. It’s not like we’re “yard” people. In fact, my yard is simply George’s toilet, and we’re always excited when Monday rolls around because that means the yard service folk will chop that nastiness up into dusty manure.

Emma Kelly has become apartment obsessed after our bedtime conversation Sunday night. On Friday and Saturday nights, EK is allowed to sleep with Mommy. We call it a “sleepover” and she thinks it’s the most funnest thing EVER. But on school nights, she has to be in her own bed. I admit it. When she got big enough for her own bed, I started lying down with her until she fell asleep and now here we are, almost 4 years later……But if I’m there when she drifts off into unconsciousness, what’s the big deal, right? Well, the big deal is that she knows when she sleeps in her own bed, she’ll wake up and Mommy will be gone, and what she really wants is for me to be there to wake her up and take her to school. Now, you and I both know that life ain’t no sitcom. And getting a cranky 5-year-old out of bed and ready for school before the crack of dawn isn’t always full of witty one-liners and laugh tracks. But all Emma Kelly knows is that she wants me there. Oh, and her nanny makes her eat fruit, which she doesn’t like one little bit.

Anyway, this past Sunday night — out of nowhere — EK burst into tears and wailed at me, “I don’t want you to go to work tomorrow!!!!”

I explained, “But Mommy has to get up very early to go to work and I don’t want to wake you.” (Does referring to myself in the third person when talking to my daughter make me obnoxious? Discuss…)

Then EK cries out, “I hate your work!!!” The blasphemy.

I calmly reply, “But Mommy has to go to work to pay for stuff.” Surely a 5-year-old can understand that, right?

“But I want you to work at the bounce house place and then you can take me to school in the morning!!!”

I explain further, “But if Mommy quits her job and works at the bounce house place, we wouldn’t be able to live in this house anymore. We’d probably have to get an apartment.”

And the seed was planted. So now EK wants to move into an apartment. And she wants me to quit my job so we can afford it. And that whole part about working at the bounce house place? That’s just her idea of an added bonus. I wish life really was that simple. And for a 5-year-old, I guess it is!

XO
Kellie