By Jennifer Savage
My daughter Lucille poured cold water on my face first thing Saturday morning and I’m not over it yet.
She made her way to our pillows as she does most every morning and stood, I thought, looking out the window above our heads. The window was locked. I knew she was safe so I kept my eyes closed hoping to squeeze out a few more minutes of sleep in the early morning.
“Up, up,” I heard her say. I knew she meant cup, and thinking there was no cup in sight, I looked up to see what she was doing. That’s when I saw she was holding a glass of water right above my head. Before I could reach her or even utter a word, she poured a full pint glass of cold water in my face.
It was 6:15 a.m.
I jumped out of bed shouting four letter words. I was soaked, my pillow was soaked and Lucille was smiling. I threw off my tank top, dried my face and, I’m pretty sure, screamed into the towel. Lucille made her way to the bathroom.
“Mama wet!” she said. Yeah, mama wet indeed.
I scooped her up, put on some dry clothes and headed straight for the coffee pot because, really, that’s the only place a story like this leads. Seth later said all he heard was shouting, stomping and then, coffee grinding.
I was officially, as he says, on the cranky bus. I am not a morning person. But since having children I’ve had to cut short my daily grumpfest in order to care for them. Saturday was a different story. It was late afternoon before I could begin to approach the world with some measure of joy. It took days before I could see how hilarious it all must have looked to Lucille.
Almost two years ago, Seth brought Eliza into our room about an hour after I pushed Lucille, hand to her face, out of me. Wrapped tight in a blanket, Lucille lay in the bend of arm where she has pretty much remained since.
“Hey baby,” Eliza said as she waved to her sister. She had no idea this little creature was now a fixture in our lives.
“This is Lucille,” I said. “Can you say Lucille?”
“Juicy!” she said.
And just like that, our youngest daughter had a nickname.
Juicy. Juice-deet. Juicy girl. The Juice.
If you ask my little 20- month old sprite what her name is she says, “Juicille!”
We’ve often been asked if Lucille goes by Lucy and we have to shuffle our feet and say, “Well, actually, no. We call her Juicy.” Then we rush to tell the story of Eliza and no Ls and, well, here we are.
Juicy is tiny. At barely 20 pounds she’s long and lean with a page-boy haircut and a perpetual fistful of animal crackers. She eats all the time. If she doesn’t’ have her head stuck in the pantry, she’s chirping, “’nack, ‘nack, ‘nack!” at me because she wants a snack. She probably eats a gallon of yogurt every week and often out eats Eliza at dinner.
Despite her feisty nickname, Juicy has, up until the last few weeks, been a pretty mellow baby. She loves to read and will often sit, looking at book by herself for a long time. She sleeps pretty well and isn’t a picky eater.
But lately it’s clear that she’s headed fast and furious toward two. She pinches, she pulls her sister’s hair, wants to suck on the computer cord and test all of the outlets with her wet little finger. She climbs the stairs and laughs with glee when I run after her. She bites and when I try in my stearnest of voices to tell her no, she throws her head back and cackles because, evidently, it is so, so funny.
Last week she refused to take a nap so I resorted to that tried and true, greenhouse-gas-spewing sleep trick known as the long drive. We drove for half an hour and I was sure she was asleep. I looked in the back seat to see her grabbing her foot, trying to chew on her heel. A few minutes later we passed a pasture with horses. She shouted, “Moo! Moo!” and, again thinking she must be asleep, I nearly drove off the road.
A few days later, she took a blue Crayola marker to my computer. When I said, “no, no Juice!” She smiled and ran away still wielding the Crayola.
But even after all of this, nothing could have prepared me for the dousing I took on Saturday.
I suspect she notices that, as the little sister, she’s always been a bit along for the ride. And now she’s taking this chance to stake her claim, let us know she’s her own little person and after Saturday I, for one, am paying attention.
The hard part is, she’s the cutest pixie you ever seen. She gives sweet kisses on the mouth and hugs around the neck. She loves Eliza and “EJ!” is the first thing she says when she wakes up. And, she is still metaphorically in the crook of my arm.
“Mama, hold me,” she says. And even with wet hair and grumpy outlook, Saturday morning I did.
Jennifer Savage is a writer and mama of Eliza and Lucille. Lately, she’s learning to be a city girl. She writes from her home in Missoula, Montana. She is also one of Mamalode’s favorite writers and you can fall in love with her too at Savagemama.com Read more of Jennifer’s mamalode articles here
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I’ve become a devoted savage fan! Thanks again!
Wonderful story… I can so relate having a 2 yr old of my own! Thank you for the laugh, I really needed it!
Oh my god, this is so like my grandson was at 2!! Biting, and pinching, and evil-cackling-giggle-of-mirth-ing when I would yelp and jump. And oh, he would skeedaddle away sooooo quickly in his gales of hilarity.
She should be an interesting one for sure!