There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oh Mallory.
She is sooooo good most of the time. For the most part she knows what is off limits and is still pretty good almost all of the time but we have our moments when neither of us are at our best and then look out.
Like tonight – she was pretending to type away on my laptop (which was turned off). She told me she was a mommy so she had to play on the compuderder. But then she turned the compuderder on and I told her she was all done. Then she does this screeching thing at me (her usual response when I have to tell her no), expecting a reaction and when I don’t give her one, she keeps doing what she was doing. And then I tell her again that she is all done and we get into a fight. And then she gets sent to her room for not listening. And then she comes out and tells me she is going to listen to me and be a good girl.
Tonight we were done with dinner, bath & into pajamas by 6.45p and I was DONE so she got sent to bed. I don’t like to yell at her but when I’m trying to clean the kitchen, and Carson is crying because he’s hungry, and I have Mallory being an idiot – the easiest thing to do is send her to bed (thank GOD she goes right to bed ~ not always asleep ~ but to bed). I felt badly that I put her down so early so after I got Carson asleep, and saw she was still awake, I let her come out and do some exercises with me. She made sure to tell me over & over “I being a good girl, mommy”. So we had a talk about how much more fun it is to be a good girl. We’ll see how tomorrow goes. But I am wondering if I need to impose a little 5 minute cool-down when we get home from school everyday, just to give her a chance to reset her attitude. We’ll see how that works tomorrow.
Wish me luck.
* * *
Overheard this afternoon…
Carson was crying in the backseat – Mallory told me “The baby is frying, mommy. He wants his daddy.” She proceeded to explain to Carson that daddy is at work. The end of camp tomorrow is not coming soon enough.
* * *
Mallory has a number of names she calls Carson – Baby, Buddy & Pretty Boy, to name a few.
Buddy is usually when she is trying to calm him down “it’s OK, Buddy”.
Pretty Boy is usually when we are on a walk and she is talking to him – she’ll say “Hi, Pretty Boy”.
Needless to say, it’s pretty hysterical to watch her call him anything, including his real name.