4 Going on 14

There has been so much humor and drama this week. But not just a bunch of both, but a lot of the two mixed together. We've had a lot of dramor this week. Or huma...

Emiline turned 4 (going on 14). This child is....something else! She is so vibrant! So passionate! So exhausting!!!

We went on a little pre-birthday date which included some party shopping. I don't think she stopped talking for more than 20 seconds at a time. It was one delightfully continuous stream of words out of her mouth. I think she must feel repressed by the other verbal behemoths in the house. We stopped to pick out a birthday #4 candle and she got all dramatic that she just couldn't decide. So I taught her something I should have taught her long ago- eenie meenie miney moe. It's now her go-to strategy for making decisions. Previous to this she'd get all twittered and say "I just don't know!" about even the simplest of choices (like syrup or jam). Now the rhyme has become her tool to figure out and then manipulate chance to get her way (an extra point in the right direction). Also, she doesn't have it memorized yet and makes up a lot of the words, like "stop a kitty in the show" instead of "catch a tiger by the toe."

So on Wednesday she turned 4. And by and large, she was an emotional pill. She sobbed for at least an hour on my bed before falling asleep about...I don't think she even knew what. And during the day she was pouring on the stomping feet and "hmmmphing" and exclaiming "I never.....I NEVER....I never!" into her pillow on at least 6 different occasions. My mom tells me this sort of spazing is pretty normal for the birthday kiddo, but Emiline always goes to great depths in anything she undertakes.

On this glorious day of her birthday, she decided to give her favorite twirly skirt a trim to make it look more like a pirate fairy skirt (never mind that I had made her one for her birthday, or maybe it was because I had made her one that she wanted to make one too). The "trim" was pretty intense, so she had to be grounded from scissors for awhile. Her penitence was also intense, and I thought we had it taken care of.

4 days later, she gets the urge to cut again. This time on her brand new Sophia the First princess nightgown. She didn't wait for me to discover any evidence, she fessed up claiming it was an accident (pretty sure she doesn't know what that word means) and so she got grounded from scissors again and I made her change into boring clothes: a plain shirt and levi shorts. Oh! The horror! AN HOUR AND A HALF later of her crying, and trying to stop herself from crying, and then crying that she couldn't stop crying, and then stopping, and then remembering she was just so sad about her plain clothes and crying again...she BEGGED me to give her a different punishment than plain clothes. So I told her she could choose- plain clothes or a spanking. She didn't take long to decide a spanking was the better choice.

This child is something else! I can see these characteristics blossoming into her greatest strengths and I know she is going to be brilliant at whatever she undertakes. But I'm not sure I'll live to see it, puberty may kill me.