Love about it

“Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.”

Albert Smith

Pip seems to cry a lot in the late afternoon.  I think it has to do with the fact that she could still benefit from a wee kip, but she hasn’t had a scheduled nap for almost a year now.  If she happens to fall asleep in the car for twenty minutes or so in the late afternoon it makes life much more bearable.  Typically, she wakes up at around 7:30 am, and her head doesn’t hit the pillow again for twelve hours.  It’s a long day for a little girl.

Lately, when Pip starts to lose it I’ve been saying things like, “Pip, we can solve anything together!” and, “We’re a great team Sweetie; we don’t need to cry about things.”  I’ve even tried giving her a mantra, “I can fix this,”  but the waterworks have prevailed.

The other day Pip was crying about some infinitesimal matter and I said, “Should we cry about it, or LOVE ABOUT IT???”  and I gave her a big hug.  IT WORKED!!!  She started smiling immediately and the tears shut off as though I’d flicked a switch.

Clearly my grammatical neurons weren’t firing when I coined the phrase, but ‘loving about it,’ might have some legs.  For three days running, when Pip is moved to tears because her shirt-tag is itchy or her hands are sticky or Fig has the blue crayon, I say in a game-show-host-kind-of-way, “SHOULD WE CRY ABOUT IT OR LOVE ABOUT IT???” and open my arms for my emotional girl.  It takes some patience to put into practice, particularly when I’ve ‘loved about it’ twice in ten minutes, but I sure appreciate being able to help Pip nip her meltdown in the bud.

(The ‘Pip nip’ combination is kind of fun, isn’t it?)