The Last Word

It's amazing what it takes to put I. in one of her best morning moods in a long time - a leotard and matching skirt. She's been laughing, exhibiting sweet, good manners, and dancing up a storm this morning. No angst this morning and it's a relief. A big fat relief that I'm relishing.

What's funny is that the road that paved this involved a tantrum yesterday in a dressing room. Those are always fun especially when it involves a 5 year old who has at least 10 times the lung volume and stamina as a 2 year old. At least there was a door to hide behind.

I. has been taking gymnastics for about 5 months now and loves it. The other little girls wear leotards and I. wears sweatpants and a t-shirt. It didn't matter to her and she never brought up the difference so I certainly didn't. She tends to march to her own drum and not care if she's doing something different and I like that about her. But one day after class on the way home, she asked what the other girls were wearing and after a short back and forth I told her that if she wanted to get one, she would have to submit herself to "shopping" at the mall because that was the only store I knew of. She hates shopping (so do I for that matter) but agreed that she would go for the leotard. So off we went yesterday.

It was going swimmingly well until the very end. That's usually how these things happen. Just when you start relaxing and patting yourself on the back feeling good about how things are going is when they start unraveling before your eyes and you're standing there watching your kid sitting on the ground sobbing and wailing in public with you standing there in disbelief thinking, "What the hell happened?!" Ah, but I jumped ahead a little.

I. had picked out the leotard and then we just needed to decide between 2 skirts. Now mind you, she goes once a week and once kindergarten starts, I don't even know if she is going to be in a gymnastics class and these dance-ish clothes aren't cheap. So taking all that into account, I really just wanted to get 1 skirt at this time and then we'd go from there in the future once we figure out the longevity of gymnastics. Well, that's where it all started to fall apart. Because when you're 5, it's hard to make a choice between 2 things that you like. We went around and around, me remaining calm and trying to help her decide because that's what a good parent should do - use this as a lesson for the bigger choices in the future, right?

Problem was that I. is an intense kid - she feels everything times 10 and as we stood there in the dressing room, I could see the emotions building up. It was like watching a tornado coming at you and not being able to stop it, just deal with it. It culminated in her throwing herself down on the floor with the 2 skirts in her hands sobbing at the top of her lungs. I kept trying calmly and quietly to help her but she just kept getting more upset so that's when Mean Momma had to come for a visit. Mean Momma kept her voice low and slow and said, "If you keep crying like this, we will walk out of this store without anything." Then I started counting 1-2 and I. knew if I got to 3, that was exactly what was going to happen so the sobbing ceased with an abrupt intake of air, followed by rhythmic sniffing.

I'm not an ogre though and part of me was thinking, "Come on, it's only 1 additional skirt." At that point, it was too late to go there and really, isn't it always just one more thing? Maybe I am too hard-core but I suspect (and fear) that it's a big ole slippery slope that "just one more thing" mentality and it doesn't feed some of the character traits I am trying to instill in I. You know like gratefulness, appreciation, and contentedness. Those things are important to me and guide me through many of the decisions I make when it comes to I.

At the end of the day, I. picked one skirt and we walked over to get a frozen yogurt. It also gave me an opportunity to have a conversation with her about how in life we have to make choices every day and if she was going to cry about all of them, her days weren't going to be very happy. I asked her if next time I needed to get something for her, should I just go pick it out without her or did she still want to pick it out? She said she wanted to come pick it out and agreed that next time, she would try to choose without the crying tantrum part of it.

"Whew," I thought, "another life lesson taught." and was just getting ready to pat myself on the back when she looked at me and said with a sweet smile, "When I have a little girl, I'm going to buy her both skirts for her leotard."

Just shoot me now.