Five

We are just over one month post fifth birthday.  I want to know what alien creature has replaced my sweet little girl.  The mood swings are incredible.  One moment we are having a nice conversation and the next moment the world has darkened, birds no longer sing, thunder rolls, and my daughter starts in on a tirade about the unfairness of the world.  I stand with my mouth open and rub my whip lashed neck.

Today Molly and I ran errands.  This use to be a pleasant thing to do.  We would shop together pleasantly.  She would help me pick out the things that I needed in such a pleasant way that I would have a hard time refusing her pleasant request for a $3.00 princess doll.  It turns out what I did was build a little greedy monster.  And today I decided I was ready for kindergarten to start so I could go back to pleasant shopping trips by myself!

Today, we dropped the boys at school and headed to Target.  This is something we have done on a regular basis since she was born.  This morning she began to whine as soon as I we parked in the Target lot.  It seems she NEVER gets to get ANYTHING she wants when we shop at Target.  I have an entire house full of the things she never gets, so this was news to me.  Despite the nip in the air, she walked at the pace of a snail because she was so busy whining about her miserable life.  It turns out she is the ONLY child in the WHOLE world who doesn't have a FurReal dog.  I am some sort of monster-mother who deprives her of all joy because I won't buy her a fake dog (we won't even start on the fact that we have a real dog and at least 15 stuffed dogs at home all ready).  This was just the beginning of 45 minutes of "can I have" and "I can't live without." We left Target without buying her a single thing.  That did not help the whining.

She then began complaining about all the other places I have made her go that are BORING.  She complained about how I make her run errands.  She asked where else we had to go and then complained about that...you see where this is going?

Next we went to Barnes and Noble to buy a baby gift.  I offered to buy her the next Ivy and Bean book.  Even though she can't read chapter books yet, she loves to have them to "read."  I don't see anything wrong with encouraging reading.  She wanted an $11 Clifford stuffed dog instead.  I said no, she had enough stuffed animals.  She whined about how unfair life is.  I tired to pick out books, but she kept interrupting me to complain about being bored.  It took us 30 minutes to get out of the store because of the tantrums followed by intense interest in something that she HAD to have to make her life complete.

Then we were off to Costco...much of the same.  Only in Costco she wants me to buy the jumbo size of something she will only eat one of.  No, no and more no.

Finally we go to Home Depot.  She didn't want anything there, but I let her pick out a new bird feeder.  Don't tell her that the other one is broken and we needed it anyway.  I also let her help with the self checkout.  She went home feeling pretty good and didn't whine once on the short trip back to our house.

We arrived at home in time for lunch and I was so exhausted from the emotional roller coaster I had been on that I started counting down the days until kindergarten instead of preparing her food.  If I had any question about whether or not to send her to all day school, it was answered today!