She has her own translator

Mornings around our house can either be completely organized, or completely insane. There is no in between. By insane, I mean chaotic, temper tantrum throwing, don't know where your socks are type of mornings.

And I only have to get one kid out the door for school at this point. Next year I'll really be in trouble.

This morning was a good one until J left for school. Then things got ugly.

L wanted eggs for breakfast, but O wanted cereal. K didn't want anything, as usual, because that child can survive on three sips of milk and a grape.

O had gotten herself dressed, but was angry with her jeans because they weren't staying up on her minuscule waist. I tightened the adjustable elastic waistband to the point that anymore adjusting might just very well saw the girl in half.

Since I hit snooze on my alarm way too many times, I didn't get up early enough to exercise and that was making me grumpy since I knew I'd never get it done later in the day, so I wasn't too patient with requests from little people who seemed to think they were in a diner waiting on their waitress, Edna, to bring them some food.

Then, K walked into the kitchen half moaning, half whining a question, "Where is blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?"

I couldn't tell what blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh meant this morning and I can't tell you what it means right now. All I know is that she wanted something.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"Where is Wawa's (that's what she calls her sister) princess blahhhhhhhhhhh?"

Even though I knew this would send her into a tailspin, I had to ask, "Where is Wawa's princess WHAT?"

"CAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she screamed.

Now I was really in a state of confusion because I knew we didn't have a princess cake in the house, but I quickly remembered that O had a Tinkerbell cake at her birthday in September and since K sometimes calls Tinkerbell a princess AND since she has an uncanny ability to remember bizarre things for months and months and months that maybe she was wondering what happened to the cake. So I answered her.

"Honey, we ate it."

She looked at me horrified and yelled, "YOU ATE IT? WHY WOULD YOU EAT IT? WAWA! MOMMY ATE YOUR CAKE!!!!!!!"

This was followed by uncontrollable sobs from her two year old little body. At this point I was thinking the girl really needed to get a grip because she was obviously overreacting and that's when O looked at me confused and said, "Why would you eat my princess cape?"

I looked back at her very confused. Cape? Why would I eat a cape? What in the heck was she talking about? And then my five year old very calmly explained to me that K wasn't asking where the princess CAKE was, she wanted to know where the princess CAPE was that they use for dress up.

It all finally made sense. K was relieved that her mother wasn't a cape eating monster and I realized that I either need to learn to speak two year old, or else I need to have O around all the time.

The irony of this hasn't escaped me. Here O is the one whose speech is constantly being scrutinized because of her cleft palate. She gets therapy; she's even having surgery in March to improve her speech. Now she's translating for someone else. Somehow maybe she just "gets it" better than I do and she can understand the misunderstood.

Here's a video clip of J's basketball game a couple of weeks ago. He's the one shooting.

J's Basketball from June Clever on Vimeo.