Mabel Molanphy

• Hav­ing Mabel clap and cheer for you while yelling “Yay, mama, you did it!! You went pee-pee on the pot­ty!” It’s so nice to be appre­ci­at­ed for the lit­tle things.

• Mabel stop­ping (ran­dom­ly) what she’s doing to run over and plant a lit­tle pico (peck) some­where (any­where from knuck­les to knee caps) before run­ning back and resum­ing play where she left off.

• Hav­ing Dad­dy fall asleep on the job, send­ing Mabel to find mama who *should have been hav­ing* some nap time to her­self. Usu­al­ly announc­ing “Dad­dy fell asleep. Can you get up and play with me?” [sigh.]

• Hav­ing a hus­band who lets me escape most Sat­ur­days to have a few hours to myself…and so much needed!

• Hav­ing lim­it­ed Spanish…meaning that when I take too long to answer Mabel’s “¿como se dice…{fill in an eng­lish word}?” while I’m try­ing to think of the trans­la­tion, she announces “we have to ask Daddy!”

• Won­der­ing how “all” the oth­er mamas seem to be doing it all, while I bare­ly make it to 6:30 pm each day…

• Being amazed dai­ly at the won­der­ful lit­tle spir­it that blessed our home.

Mabel loves to help — no mat­ter what it is. When­ev­er mama or dad­dy are clean­ing the house (yes, we clean the house some­times), Mabel will imme­di­ate­ly stop what­ev­er she’s doing, grab her Mabel-sized broom and pro­ceed to sweep our neat­ly gath­ered piles of dirt into oblivion.

I can ful­ly attribute Mabel’s inde­pen­dence and eager­ness to help to her mama. Here is a short video to show you what I mean: