IF YOU CAN'T HEAR ME IT'S BECAUSE I'M IN PARENTHESES

. . . but sometimes I think God is giving me some very good insight into what it means to be a momma. Let's see, there was that time Scoop pooped (and when I say pooped, I mean diarrhead) all over the dining room floor, and well. . . you can't just leave it there; and all those evenings she gets restless and wants to be entertained (as if I don't have anything better to do than get on my hands and knees and retrieve toys out from under the couch); and, oh yeah, when the neighbors come over t.w.i.c.e. to explain that your 'child' has almost caused an accident because they were playing in the street unsupervised (i.e. a nice way to say she is the neighborhood hoodlum and you are a bad parent); and like that time she knocked over and shattered one of my very favoritest most special wine glasses that I love and are probably the best thing I've ever picked out in my whole life (except maybe for when I picked out Sadie) and there was also red wine in that glass, and well. . . you can't just leave it there; and every morning at 5:00 a.m. when she jumps on the bed to cuddle (which really means "Hi momma, let me lay here on your head with my bony elbows in your ribs and breath heavily into your ear. Isn't this cozy?"); and also that time at 3:30 a.m. (why is it always in the wee hours?) when she yakked up her partially-digested dinner on the new carpet, and well. . . you can't just leave it there; but at the end of the day (even that day she chewed up my favorite pair of heels) I wouldn't trade her for anything in the Whole Wide World except maybe a beach vacation, during which time she would stay at Happy Mailman, and I would eventually go pick her up because, well, you can't just leave her there. . .