Just the Facts

I sometimes wonder if Lilie will be reviewing the blog when she gets older; I know there's a whole generation of kids who are going to have a more detailed account of their childhood than most people my age...

I've seen other parents make similar entries in their blogs: today was a mess!  I think it's important to document some of the lows along with the highs, so here goes.

We've been enduring a heat wave in Saint Louis over the past few days, and today was the capper: 110 degrees!  Katie and I decided it would be a good day to see a movie, so we ended up going to Mid Rivers mall to see Madagascar 3. 

We played a few games before the show.  Lilie used her tickets to pick out three small plastic eraser-sized dinosaurs.  She won a small ball in another game.  We had popcorn and candy during the movie, which was awesome.  We walked around the mall a bit, eventually ending up at a store called Slackers.  The store had a display full of stuffed animals, and Lilie fell in love with a stuffed toy Corgi.

Normally we manage this by explaining that the toy needs to stay with its friends, or something similar.  Lilie would have none of that today.  She completely melted down, throwing herself onto the floor and eventually screaming that scream that doesn't so much hurt your ears as it does physically rattle your eardrums.  The kind of scream where you see people looking at you to see if you're beating your child or stealing one that doesn't belong to you.

She kept it up all the way out of the store, through the mall, to the parking lot and then home.  Among the things she screamed was, "But I only got two things!" 

It's so hard not to respond with yelling and a tantrum of my own!  It's embarrassing, frustrating and painful to see her in that state - like one big ugly ball of emotion for all of us.  One thing that frustrates me most is that when Lilie decides she's done with her tantrum, she gets to move on.  I, on the other hand, have a hard time letting go of the grudge I feel for the knothole I was just pulled through...  I still have a lot of growing up to do myself.