is you happy?

Whenever Sophia thinks there's possibility of unhappiness (at least those that involve her, anyway), she will stop and ask, "Is Mommy happy?" Even if you tell her yes, she will ask at least several times more, just to make sure nothing has changed. For example, everytime she gets in and out of time-out, she'll ask, "Is Mommy happy?"

A bigger example: last Friday, Greg and I went to Salt Lake City for our friend Jennifer's wedding. A little background...We had a 9:15 a.m. flight and as before all trips, we had almost zero sleep the night before. In fact, I had pretty much pulled an all-nighter to finish writing my brief to the judge from my last case. I had to leave work early on Thursday for a doctor's appointment and parent-teacher conference so I had to bring all my junk home and I didn't want to spend my entire time in SLC writing the stupid thing. The upshot to staying up all night was that I was awake for the earthquake that hit downstate Illinois. I must have fallen asleep on the couch and woke up because I heard stuff rattling. I thought maybe it was just the laundry rattling stuff in the basement--apparently, it was an earthquake. Neato.

Ok, I digress. Back to Sophia: Greg's dad was coming right around 7am so we could leave by 7:15 since we had to park the car and all. I was a little sad that Sophia might not wake up before we had to go, but a few minutes after 7, I heard her moaning in her room. I went in and holy crap (literally), did her room stink. I walked over to her bed and sure enough, she had pooped in her underwear. The first thing she asks me is, "Is Mommy happy?" Of course, you don't want to be like, "well, actually, I'm not since now we have to clean up this mess and I should be walking out to the car right now to get to the airport." That might not go over well in the history of good mommies. So I say, "well, I'm ok." I have to say that it was relatively well-contained, although it did mean the demise of the Jasmine underwear, and Jasmine is one of Sophia's favorites. I think she is often sadder about having to throw out underwear than she is about actually having poop smooshed all over her behind.

So we go to the tub, clean her off, bathe her, and get her dressed...and every 2 minutes or so, Sophia asks, "Is Mommy happy?" It's kind of sweet, so it's hard to say no. Of course, depending on your perspective, it could also be brilliantly manipulative. We'll go with sweet for now.

This morning, we gave the kids little presents from the trip--some new Legos for Nicholas and an Angelina Ballerina and Posey Prefers Pink (super cute story about a girl who loves all things pink and then decides at the end that she prefers purple) books for Sophia. Sophia woke up and asked us if we were happy. We said yes. Then she says, "Is Mommy and Daddy really, really, really happy?" We told her yes.