Summer Madness

It's always good to be home. We stopped at Starbucks as we left Astoria this morning to get coffee and a breakfast sandwich. Libby doesn't like eggs, so I took the egg out of hers, but still she refused to eat it saying that the bread hurt her lips.

(Seriously?)

I said, "Okay, don't eat it then." The problem was that already by this time Peyton was finishing off a sucker that I'd given her after she'd eaten her sandwich. Libby knew she wasn't going to get a sucker without eating the sandwich first, so she gripped it in her hand till Portland, but just couldn't force herself to eat it. Finally, in Portland she said again, "Mom, I really want a sucker now."

"Sorry. You didn't eat your sandwich."

Silence.

Explosion: "Mom! When you don't give me what I want, I'm MAD AT YOU!"

Wow. I'm thinking those are some MAD verbal skills to put together your words, especially if you're really that mad. I'm impressed.

"Mom! When you give me what I don't want, I'm MAD! AT YOU!"

"Fair enough." I say. "I can live with that. When you act this way, and then I give you what you want, you'll become a brat. I'm not raising brats."

Make no mistake, it's not that I've never given in before. In fact, last night we ate fish and Cheez-Its in bed, while watching The Incredibles. But that was my idea, so it doesn't really count.

When we got home today we put up the bouncy house. I've been promising that we'd put it up when I got done with school. As I sit here, the girls are jumping and sliding. Occasionally, they go at it and I intervene mostly for the benefit of the neighbors.

Peyton came in the house five minutes ago and said in her most tattle-taley voice, "Mom, Libby just called me a human." Aaaahhhh, summer.