I feel the need to dump some emotions on you unsuspecting souls right now. Mostly, it was the Elder's birthday yesterday, which for those of you not in the know was Memorial Day. The enables my child to revel in a celebratory long weekend palooza as if it is all for her once every six years. This was that one in six. (For those of you who may not know the Elder, this was her second go-round of birthday-on-Memorial-Day celebrations as she was born on Memorial Day. She milked this one for all it was worth unlike the last time when she was relatively calm and agreeable.)
This was the first birthday where the phrase "You are not queen of the universe" came up one or three times.
Fortunately, the Younger's birthday is coming up in only fifteen days, so the focus has definitely shifted, and we appreciate that. My general assumption with all kids is that they have their moments of heart-stopping brilliance as well as their moments of forehead smacking frustration. I'm not the mom that believes her child is immune to the latter.
And here is when my emotion dump #1 happens. I took the Elder to the Glorious Land of Target with a few birthday dollars in hand yesterday to let her go nuts in the toy section. Mind you, the amount that she had doesn't take a child far, but she is unerringly bound and determined to s-t-r-e-t-c-h those dollars for all they're worth. And when I suggested that she reimburse me out of her piggy bank stash for any overage on the TOY THAT I SO DESPERATELY WANT! but didn't quite have enough bills for (literally the difference of $2-3), there was a swift and furious denial of that idea. (Oh, no you di-INT suggest that i-DE-a). My child would rather have some coins in hand rather than throw them away on plastic gee-gaws. Oh, my little penny pincher...may you always be so.
The Elder works really (really, really) hard on getting all that she can from her small allotment when the rare occurrence happens and she has money to burn. She is the child who paces the aisles maddeningly for upwards of 45 minutes debating the merits and cost of each possible item, including the smallest of the small ones' toys, if you let her. And then she'll start all over again once she's been through once. Minutes upon minutes later, she settled on four reasonably priced items that put her right at her grand total of one's of dollars. And the creme de la creme of her stash is a Frozen-themed toy microphone that plays the same 18-second clip of "Let It Go."
Oh, but she loves it. Oh, but for the power of peer pressure else I'm fairly certain that the Elder would not give more than a passing glance at anything Frozen.
And we listened to that same 18-second clip on a continuous loop for the entire ride home. And then all through the afternoon and evening. And then on the drive to school this morning.
Story problem time: Your child plays the same 18-second clip of a song continuously. If the drive to school takes 13 minutes (because you got stuck behind both the school bus and the workers cutting down trees along the side of the road), how many times do you listen to "Let It Go" during this car trip?
Answer: A whole bunch-o-times.
And that leads me to my emotion dump #2. We are true devotees of a nice pint of Graeter's ice cream, especially the flavors that have chocolate chips. If you're not familiar with the brand, Graeter's uses a different method of adding their chips (the french pot method, which I now know), and the result of this yields large, malleable, fudgy, truffly chips scattered throughout. Occasionally, often once a pint, you'll hit on what we refer to as the Mother Lode of chocolate, whereupon the chocolate coalesced into a fudgy vein of chocolate hidden in the silky depths of the ice cream. The find is often both unexpected and deep. And when you find one of these veins, you want to weep but quietly so as not to alert anyone who is around you to the Mother Lode.
Well. When I was laboring through the aisles of my child's Nirvana yesterday, the boy found his way into one of these Mother Lodes, ate it, and then gleefully told me about it in hushed tones upon my return.
To explain my point here, let's use an analogy about the Elder. I birthed her (I bought that pint). I nursed her (I started eating that pint). I cared for her every need (I put that pint back in the freezer). Yet she always has and always will prefer the boy over me (that blasted pint gave up the Mother Lode to the boy).
I am glad for the boy and his good fortune. I am equally disappointed for my lack of immense fudginess. To that pint, I am the Queen of the Universe, and it just bowed down before the court jester and gave up the goods.
Fortunately, there's always another day to reign supreme and another pint or two stashed away in the other freezer for us all.
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