Teaholic not quite anonymous

...the demon possessed, key aficionado, worrier about daddy.

Maddy loves my keys. Well, she loves any keys. But she understands which keys go to which locks. It's crazy to me how much she knows about that. I say let's go to the mailbox and she'll pick out the right key. If we go to the car, she'll pick out the car key (and knows just where the locks are on the car, too). She understands which key is our door key. However, she's obsessed with them since she can't quite make them work. She can normally get them in the lock part of the time, but obviously she can't turn and pull the doors.

She's confused about our mailboxes. We have two sets in our court and she knows which mailbox is ours out of 16 different ones per set. She helps me open our mailbox and get our mail. However, since the other set of mailboxes look identical to ours she wants to use our key in the other mailbox but it doesn't work. It really frustrates her. So I need to pull her away. But she always wants to go back.

She likes to climb our neighbors' stairs when their doors don't have screen doors. She wants to take the keys up to the door and try to unlock the locks! Of course, I can't let her go messing with people's houses. That would scare the heck out of me if I heard my locks being rattled. I especially don't like her to mess with one neighbor's locks. They are a young group, maybe early 20s-mid 20s. They are quiet, keep to themselves and seem decent. However, they don't have children and I'm not quite sure how well they would take to my toddler messing with their rental property. I know everyone else in our townhouse unit pretty personally and while I still don't let Maddy mess with their locks or doors, I know that they wouldn't overtly get upset since they seem to like Maddy a ton. I don't know this group of people and definitely don't want Maddy to get in trouble with them.

Today, she started to climb their stairs so I took her off and she started to cry, but was ok. Except she went back to it again and as she was walking up to the stairs I said, "Maddy, no, we aren't going to climb their stairs...nooooooo." She turned around, looked at me and burst out crying. Now, I'm not talking, a few tears, I'm talking CRRRRRYYYYING... I held her a bit, tried to get her interested in other activities--nothing. So I wound up taking her inside where she continued to cry for another 5 minutes. I put on an upside down show and it finally seemed to distract her but only if I held her and snuggled her, too. As I was walking by the chinese neighbor's house I saw grandma come to the door and give me a little wave, chuckle and sad face. She knows a temper tantrum when she sees one!

Tonight I got Maddy ready for bed while Matt mowed the lawn. She took her bath and as I was getting her ready Matt started the lawnmower. Immediately, Maddy said, "Dada." With the most serious worried look on her face. She was worried about Matt. She just kept saying it over and over and pointing to the window. Finally I had to open the shade and drapes to let her see out to see daddy. As soon as she saw daddy she knocked on the window. Of course, he couldn't hear her, but I hoped that was enough. Nope. She wouldn't eat her bedtime snack or drink her milk. So I just laid her down. Two minutes later she was calling for him. So I brought her downstairs to the front window to let her watch him mow. He was done less than 4 minutes later. He heard her knock on the window and after he put the lawnmower away he came in and quickly washed his hands and took her from me and we went through the bedtime routine with him. She's down as peaceful as could be now. She just needed to know he was ok and that loud lawnmower wasn't doing anything mean to her daddy! As long as she had an eye on him, she was fine. She needed to see he was ok. My little worrier. She got that from me.

Poor Matt, gets home from a long day at work, mows the lawn to have to hussle in to put Maddy to bed without even the opportunity to shower first. I felt bad. He, on the other hand, just let's it roll right off his back. Never even seemed bothered by it at all. I think he kinda liked that Maddy was worried about him, really!

Ok, well, it's been a LOOOOOOOOOONG day today. I'm kinda achy tonight so I'm not going to work out after all Better safe than sorry. Matt and I planned our extended weekend getaway for June yesterday including hotel reservations and dinner/brunch. Matt's parents are generously willing to come and watch Maddy. We are planning another outing for us in August. Something to look forward too! Especially since I believe the terrible twos may have just hit early!!!

Dancing with the stars finale is tonight! Who do you want to win? Goodnight!