DUH

I should have known it was so simple. In fact, I feel foolish. If you've been keeping up with my blog - and I know you have - you know that Piper said her first self-motivated "I love you" to our most spoiled and undeserving dog, Leo, a few weeks ago. I was crushed though others inexplicably seemed amused. JERKS seemed amused. Some people (MY PARENTS) even thought it was funny to tell me Piper's cruelty would only get worse. They are out of my will now. So, that's that and I moved on...or didn't but had to soldier on despite my depression. In fact, I was so forgiving that we treated Piper to the kid equivalent of Las Vegas in the form of Nickelodeon Suites last weekend, which is a resort/amusement park based on Nickelodeon TV characters. Yeah, just one more thing my parent self did that my teenage self is horrified by. Anyway, we went last weekend and it was as if Piper was on a really happy version of crack for 48 hours. I've truly never seen her smile for so long. Sure, there were a few meltdowns like when some totally insane kid thought the Dora fountain was his to share with her and when Piper decided that the only thing she could do for 45 minutes was to make me schlep her slippery, smoldering, squirming 28 pounds around the 16 mile wide pool in the blazing sun and the 460 times she made Jaime and me "pet" and "hug" the giant ceramic Dora in the 96 degree heat. It's more humiliating than it sounds. Oh, and then of course, there was our argument about whether or not it was safe for her to jump alone into the deep end of the pool. I'll just say that argument was settled by one of us attempting it and the other one tackling her. You work it out. So, we had some "moments" as they say, but all in all, she was psyched and charming and ecstatic and adorable in her parade of bathing suits. Parents with their own cute kids stopped to tell us how gorgeous Piper is (I'm totally throwing those parents a bone. Their kids weren't even in the cute ballpark when compared to Piper). Sure, we needed some alcohol to get through the "mass slimings" that the good folks at Nickelodeon think are fun to do at the pool 16 times a day accompanied by Beyonce's Single Ladies for some reason and I got 6th degree sunburn (or whatever degree is 1 below me exploding into flames) and we are about to pawn our car to pay for everything, but Piper loved it and when Piper is happy, mommy and daddy are happy. I thought that face in the photo above was going to be my reward for all that pain and money and hangovers and I was good with that, but the night that we got home, I put my exhausted, tanned, beautiful girl into her crib and said "night-night" and she said, "night-night mommy, I love you."
DUH...buy her love.