That's Entertainment!

This week I took Maria to see her first play, Peter Pan, and today Mike took both girls to their first movie, Madagascar 3.  They haven't seen 1 or 2 but I bet they can catch right up, ha!

Maria did great, just great, at the play.  It was at SEVEN o'clock at night, which is crazy for them but I figured the heck with it, they are sometimes up that late in their rooms so why not.  We went with Marta and her older kids, Maddy and Charlie.  Maria is not exactly a 'live in the now' person, though.  Every time there was applause she'd clap and clap, and, all wild-eyed, say to me, "DO WE HAVE TO LEAVE NOW?".  I'd say, NO! and she'd say OKAY, all relieved.  Sheesh!

She got her progress report for swimming and she is still a Pike, or whatever the lowest level is, but I have confidence that she'll be an Eel someday and I wouldn't have said that last summer.  She is sticking her face in the water, and kicking and digging and really almost swimming!  It's exciting.  She is exciting.

This was bad, though.  I wore a dress to the play, it's been over 100 degrees here, which, ugh, what do you wear?  I am just glad I'm not pregnant this summer.  Anyways, I wore a dress that I just bought from Old Navy and we were driving out of the garage and Maria said to me "Mommy, that dress makes you look married".  And I was like, married?  What the heck?  And then I realized what she meant and I wanted to go change right away.  She meant PREGNANT.  She always says that on my next 'married day', I should have a baby boy and call him Fizella, or whatever, I guess I may have said at some point that Mommy and Daddy got married and then I had Anthony or whatever, so she takes married to mean pregnant.  Ugh and she said I looked PREGNANT in my new DRESS!  She doesn't have a mean bone in her body, I told a friend of mine, so she wasn't being mean, just honest.  Sigh.  I'm WORKING ON IT, Maria!

Phase

We are going through a bad phase with Maria, wherein she screams and yells her way through most of the day if things don't go exactly her way.  I keep thinking, really?  Terrible Fours?  Sometimes I find myself afraid that this is actually how she is and I'm worried that no one is going to like her!  Two days this week we were at Marta's house - one time Marta took her home with her after swimming and I went to get her FOUR HOURS after she got there and one time we went over and spent the day and both times she FLIPPED out.  The first time was the worst, she screamed and yelled and fought with me so badly that Marta had to carry the baby out.  She wouldn't get in her carseat and refused to get off the floor.  So I told her FINE, but if we get into a car accident and you fly out the window, don't come crying to me!  It's not my finest parenting moment, but I don't care.  I have fought with Anthony PLENTY about getting in his car seat, I have dealt with his tantrums for two and a half years so Maria is going to have to learn the hard way!

Yesterday morning she woke up and came in our room, laid down in our bed, and then Veronica dared to come in and Maria started HOWLING, she was screaming and screaming, so loudly that she woke up the baby and Anthony.  I didn't care so much about the baby because she woke up fine, but Anthony was really freaked out.  I was freaked out too - I can't take all that screaming UPON WAKING, what the hell?

This morning she got mad because we wouldn't let her eat her breakfast, (which she ordered like this:  "I want crackers and drinking applesauce and water, cold, with ice".  It's like living with Joan Crawford.) anywhere but the kitchen and she was furious.  I was washing bottles and getting one ready for Felicity, who was shrieking away in her high chair and Maria came in, yelling again, screaming and furious.  So I took the envelope of applesauce and chucked it on the table and it went everywhere.  Ugh.  I am not proud of this behavior!  It's just - it's hard to work with someone like this, day in and day out.  She stays up late and wakes up early and sometimes literally wraps herself around my leg when I am trying to walk.  She screams and yells and THREATENS me (if I put her in her room, she yells "when I get out of here I am going to BITE YOU Mommy!).

So.  I am hoping it's a phase.  Because I really love Maria and I really like her a LARGE PART of the time.  But that small part, where she is so bossy and screamy and mean and horrible, feels like a lot.

Death and Dying

So Death and Dying is a phase of Health Class that we used to take in high school, I think our senior year.  However, Maria would like to start this class RIGHT NOW.  JEEZ, she has been asking about death a lot lately.  She's been asking Mike the following questions:

• Do only old people die? 
• Really old people?
• Do we know any old people?
• Is she going to die? 
• Is she really old?  

Ay yi yi!  She is a smart thing and it's hard to keep up with her!  Sunday we were in church and kind of a crazy guy came in and started yelling.  It was all taken care of really quickly, apparently, he's come in there before, but no sooner was the guy gone than Maria came over to me.  She asked me who was that guy?  I said I don't know who he was.  She said why was he yelling?  I said he was mad.  She said why was he mad?  I said there was something wrong with him, that he was sick in his head.  She said if he was sick in his head, why did he come to church?  I said well, sometimes you don't know that you don't feel good until you get there.  Like how sometimes you go to school, I said, and then later they call and say you don't feel good and you have to go home?  She said, did they call his mom?  I said maybe.  Sheesh!  And I was really nervous and having to riff on all these questions, it was crazy.  

We start swimming next week, thank the good Lord.  We went strawberry picking this week, on Tuesday.  She told me on Monday that going to the store was NOT going out, that it didn't count as DOING SOMETHING.  Ha, what can I do?  I've had a good four years where she thought a trip to the store was actually a trip somewhere, but the jig is up now.