Who's in charge here?

BC has recently begun refusing to eat her dinner. Unless it's a corn dog or a hot dog or some other equally unhealthy and inappropriate excuse for dinner.

Tonight, I looked at her plate and said, "I am not proud of you, because you are refusing to eat your dinner."

"Mm," she responded diffidently.

Then she looked at my plate: "Are you finishing your dinner Mommy? I'm very proud of you!" Then she saw two cherry tomatoes left on my plate that I was saving for last. "Oh, you haven't finished your tomatoes, Mommy? I'm not proud of you."

Time lapse

We had blueberry pie tonight. It was pretty awesome, I have to say. The lemon was prominent. Love it. And I even made a lattice crust. Because I could. And here it is:

So we gave BC some of the pie and a touch of ice cream. She ate a bit of the pie and all of the ice cream, demanded more ice cream, and gave up on the pie when she learned that no ice cream would be forthcoming. Later in the evening I said, "You didn't care for that blueberry pie, did you?"

"No," she said. "I like peach pie."

"Oh really? When have you had peach pie?"

"Um, it was about five weeks ago, I fink."

"Really? Huh. I didn't remember that."

"Mm. Yeah. It was maybe when I was at law school."

"At *law school*" I asked, incredulously.

"Mm-hmm. There was a bug on the table and I hit the table and it went away."

"Oh. When did you go to law school?"

"Probly about four weeks ago."

My worst fears for my child are coming true. She'll be part of yet another generation of lawyers.

Oh criminy

BC has two cousins who have been visiting recently who are born gymnasts, and daredevils to boot. The eldest, whose nickname is Bean, can climb in and out of high chairs as if they were mere stairs. I've never seen anything like it.

Today, BC was trying to climb into her high chair (which she tried again later only to find herself can over teacup on the kitchen floor with her high chair on top of her) when I scolded her and told her, "No! You may not climb into your high chair. You are not Bean."

"I'm not Bean?" she said. "But Bean is the best!"

Random thoughts

Last night, as Matt was walking her around the neighborhood, she was telling him about a conversation she and I had had during the day. She said I had asked her a question, and then said, "I was unable to answer that question."

This morning at breakfast, she was demanding something (sausage or eggs or a napkin or something) and her daddy said, "That's no way to talk. How do you say it nicely?" She replied, "Pweeeeze." A few moments later she said, "Is that nicer?"

After breakfast, she was playing with her little brother's toy and hitting the button to make it play music. "I'm playing with this because it makes [my little brother] feel better." Not 10 seconds later, she walked up to her little brother and konked him in the head with it, making him cry. Apparently its soothing properties are not effective in the face of bludgeoning.

BC explains to me all about the play house at the public library.

Utter indifference

BC is in a refusing-to-nap stage, which is driving me absolutely nuts. It's a willful refusal, not an inability. She talks and talks and talks in her room until she's whipped herself up into a frenzy of giddy chatter, all the while fighting the sleep she really needs, and she ends up falling asleep at 6:30 p.m. after we've eaten dinner, and waking up at her bedtime. Needless to say, this is beyond irritating.

Today, I tried a disappointed tone with her and said, "Mommy is extremely disappointed in you that you won't take a nap." She looked me full in the face and said, "Yeah, that's maybe the problem. [pause] Can I get some milkies?"

It was a tough day for BC as a result of much frustration and screaminess from the smallest member of the family, who had a massive bellyache.

BC ordered her own dinner tonight at Cracker Barrel (or Crapper Barrel, and she calls it). After Matt got her strapped in to her high chair, for which she praised him highly and said, "I'm so proud of you," we asked her what she wanted to eat. She said she would have pancakes with booberries and sausage and milkies. We said that would be fine, but that she would need to tell the waitress herself. She said she would. The poor waitress walked up and before she could even finish saying hello, BC said, "Pancakes! With booberries!" The server very sweetly took the order, which BC competently completed with a request for "sausage" and "milkies," and then looked at us and said, "Can I take your drink orders?"

Later, as we left the restaurant, we sat in the rocking chairs for a little while as BC sat in one next to us and then ran over to the checkerboard table and carefully stacked all of the giant checkers as a nod to her OCD. We told her we needed to leave and Matt tried to pick up the car seat containing BC's little brother. BC announced, "We can just leave him here. We don't need him anymore. I want a new little brother." Perhaps a little less screaminess, Tiny One. Apparently you're on thin ice.

As a final note and recognition of her ridiculous memory, she remembered something ridiculously isolated and temporally distant today. I broke my toe about 2 months ago by running the coffee table over it as I was vacuuming. It was the second time I had broken a toe. The first time, as I had told some people two months ago, was when I was in college and fell down the dorm stairs, catching my toe on the vertical railing bars as I fell. Tonight, Matt was praying with her for his niece who was graduating from college. BC piped up, "Mommy broke her toe on a rail there." He said, "Where?" "At college."

Wow.