empathy

Last night Ella fell on her way to turn on her nightlight before bed. She fell hard. The kind where there is a pause during which a kid takes a giant inhale before exhaling a guttural scream. She opened her mouth then let out the second wail and out poured the red, as she calls it. When she fell, her teeth jammed up against the inside of her lip, and came through to the outside. She literally has teeth marks on the skin below her lip.

I sat on the bathroom floor holding her crying, bleeding form while nursey went to get Ibuprofen. Maya tottled over, blankie in hand and crawled onto my lap as well, and leaned her head into the crook of Ella's neck. She took her normally rough and smacking hands and stroked Ella's arm. It was the sweetest expression of empathy I think I've ever seen. And quite lost on Ella who cried (who could blame her?) for a very long time.

Yesterday, Brady came over as usual before preschool and had breakfast with us. He just got back from an incredibly exciting trip to Disney and he and Ella were twittering and whispering and laughing about nothing that made any sense. As I'm sipping my tea, I hear Ella say in a loud stage whisper, "There were two blueberry muffins left and one was going to be for you and one for me, but Mommy ate them and now there are none for us!"

I quickly corrected her, saying that it was fine for Mommy to eat them- I just hadn't known they were gone when I suggested Ella and Brady share them.

Ella looked at me quizzically (I swear with a hint of 14 year-old-defiance) and then turned to Brady and said in amazement, "How did she hear what I said?"

Apparently, the whisper takes some perfecting. Especially when your mother is a mere 3 feet across the table from you.