Phoebe Revealed

The pure evil that is Phoebe is typically not revealed to those living outside our four walls. The hillarious cackle of her laugh, the way she smacks her sisters in the head when she wants something, the four million times a day we have to tell her to leave the dog alone, the constant climbing on anything that could add an element of danger to the exercise... these are things she reserves for her closest and most beloved family members. My sister once remarked that all she ever hears when she calls is me saying, "Phoebe, no" "Phoebe, stop that" or "Phoebe, get out of _fill-in-the-blank_" - and she couldn't understand it because when she sees Phoebe, she isn't naughty at all.

You see, Phoebe is still painfully uncertain around other people. All of our family is in Nebraska, so we don't see them on a daily/weekly/or even monthly basis. She only goes to daycare twice a week and we haven't had a babysitter other than family since Phoebe has been home. So when we're visiting our folks or hanging with friends, Phoebe clings to us like a baby howler monkey. She is slowly gaining confidence, but we can still tell that she's very uncomfortable and worried when she's away from her stuff and her house.

However. The Grandmas were here for the first two weeks of my recovery and NOW they get it. No longer will they think we're overreacting when we tell them how busy she is! The first night my mom was here, after a full day of the spectacularly active Miss Phoebe, Chris said she practically collapsed on the couch once Phoebe was in bed. My mother-in-law walked around muttering statements like, "She never stops!" and "Oh my, she's naughty".

Uh huh... so we've been saying. But noooooooooo, no one wanted to believe that our beautiful, petite little munchkin was a fireball waiting for her next adrenaline high. Phoebe is full blast, all the time. And it's exhausting. But it's also caused fits of spontaneous giggles when Chris and I catch her doing something that our other two would never have thought of. We give Miss Phoebe points for creativity - 3 points for using the Lego table as a step for climbing over the arm of the couch, 2 points for wheeling the toy car over to the table in an attempt to get Anna's juice box, 2 points for using the cat as a trampoline (we give it a higher creativity rating but must subtract points for cruelty to animals)... you get the idea.

I did point out to Chris that if we adopt a little boy in the future, Phoebe's current behavior is breaking us in nicely for his rough and tumble football-playing years. In return, Chris pointed out that we won't be able to attend our possible-future-son's football games because we'll be visiting Phoebe in the juvenille detention center.

He may have a point.