A Day In The Life...

I will give you a lovely play by play of my sweet angel last night… I picked her up from school and I could tell that she was a bit cranky. Me, being the brilliant and sensitive mother that I am asked, “what’s wrong?.” That question apparently opened the portal of all things evil because my “angel” began to spew forth sassy and disrespectful language. Between the door of the school and the door of my car she was on the verge of getting grounded for 2 days, at which point she responded with, “Mommy, I don’t think you want me to throw a fit right now because you and I both know how I can be!” I, in my parental wisdom stated, “Bring it!” and “Bring it” she did. I had to go pick up some hay for a church display and on the way she said things like, “I don’t care…whatever…you can’t make me.” At that point we had been together maybe 15 minutes and the angel had shown her horns. I told her to not speak to me till we got home or she was grounded for the week. It was hysterical watching her try to not implode from lack of speech. She finally broke down and begged me for forgiveness and I informed her that I was not ready to give it yet because she only wanted it so she could talk…the silence continued. We finally made it home and the child climbed the stairs to her room where she barricaded herself in and moped about all the people that had wronged her that day. I made dinner and she came down the stairs, only to thrash around on her seat, make gagging faces while making claims that she was full and in the same breath asking for candy. Brian and I sat across from each other at the dinner table trying not to laugh and groan at the agonizing long parenting responsibility of walking through each bite victory. After slouching in her chair from the herculean effort it took to eat those 5 bites, Brian announced it was violin practice. It took 12 minutes…12, to get her violin out of the case, her chin padding strapped on and her bow tightened. She then, with her feeble arms, lifted her violin and began to play the worst rendition of her song that I have ever heard. She was so exhausted from the effort, she collapsed on the floor and stated she was not possibly able to go through that again! (I was sitting across the room silently thanking God that she had done her homework at school) We managed to screech out a couple of more songs on the violin and daddy declared enough and told her to put her violin away. This is the point that her body contorted in a writhing, wailing thing that syfy movies are made out of. Her frail little frame was able to slowly climb the stairs and drag herself into the bathroom where it appeared all evil was washed off with a good bar of Dove and some shampoo. In the end, she was grounded for the week, mommy and daddy were given 3 great hours of teachable moments and she learned about respecting her authorities that God had placed over her. She trotted off to bed with a smile on her face and I climbed into bed in the fetal position praying that we do not have to do that again the next day. SIGH!