More Conversations with Kids

I haven't shared any riveting conversations I've had with my girls lately. We've had lots of fascinating life lessons, let me tell you...but here's a few to start.

We did sleepovers last night. Bookworm had a friend over and Popcorn went to stay the night with someone. Studmuffin was late getting home from work. I made a comment like this "I hope that handsome husband of mine gets home soon." Bookworm followed with "I know what's going to happen then...kissing....and then DANCING!"

Dancing? Dancing? We got The Sound of Music for Christmas. I think she's been watching a little too much. I laughed and said, "Kissing? Probably, but dancing?"

At this point her friend piped up "I'd pay to see that, and I want front row seats!"

Conversation #2
The girls both got up 15 minutes early on Friday morning. This left plenty of time to strip their beds so I could wash sheets before they left for school. It also gave Popcorn all sorts of time to share her vast amount of knowledge with me. Did you know that eating breakfast is important and very good for you? Did you know that if you use stain remover it will just make your stains fall off? Even if you didn't get it treated right away! And you can buy clothes that when you get stains on them, the stain doesn't stick... It just falls off! The list went on and on...Did you know...Did you know...

Me: Wow! You sure know a lot of stuff today!
Popcorn: Yep! I watch commercials!

Conversation #3

Bookworm has issues with piano. She doesn't like to practice songs that are hard. She never wants to be challenged. I blame this on her intelligence. Yes, I know I'm bragging, but I can tell you from experience here...If school has always came easy and required little to no effort to make all A's it's hard to understand why something should not just come to you easily.

I was the same way with piano. Only worse. I would play, mess up, bang my fists on the keyboard, yell "I hate this!" just in case someone didn't hear my little fit, and continue...Strangely, my mom let me quit piano...Wonder why?

I refuse to let my girls quit. And it really is due to school coming so easily. I want them to learn to work for something and persevere even when it's not easy. College was quite a shock to me, and I darn near lost my scholarship my first semester, because I'd never had to learn to study, or even put effort into things. Just being honest here. So, no matter how bad they want to quit (which is really only about once a week, the rest of the time, they practice without complaint) they will take piano until they're 19. Someday they'll realize that this is past adulthood, but don't tell them.

So, all that rambling to say Bookworm did not to practice her song The Weeping Willow. She kept wanting me to play it for her. I played it once, then told her she'd just have to struggle through a few times. This makes her itch. Seriously, when she can't get a song right off, she gets upset and has to scratch instead of playing the piano. This results in me getting exasperated, leaving the room so I don't have to look at her, and mentally counting how many times she practiced each song.

Well, this night was a rough night for her. I know you'd never believe this of a child of mine, but she has a very SLIGHT tendency towards dramatics. Like blown 20 million times bigger than my tendency. (Scary, I know. I'm dreading puberty.) I got so annoyed with her histrionics, I told her go to bed. She stomped away, screamed "NO!!!" And slammed her bedroom door. And began to throw things. Her dad went to talk to her. "You're not spanking me!" She said when he opened the door.

Oh, Gentle Reader, she was heading towards trouble...big time. She knew, we knew it, and yet she continued to throw her fit. Do you know what the root of this fit was? You see, when I told her to go straight to bed, she had NOT YET BRUSHED HER TEETH!!! That's right, this whole explosion was over missing brushing her teeth!

We had a not-so-gentle discussion about whether any of her actions of the night were going to get the results she wanted (teeth brushed, no spanking, etc.) She conceded probably not. She is grounded for 2 weeks from tv, computer and video games. I forgot she was grounded when I agreed to the sleepover, and didn't remember until the friend was already here. She has one week from tomorrow left for this punishment to be up.

Actually, I hadn't planned on sharing all of that. What I was going to say is this: She commented last night, "Hey! I like this song! It doesn't make me itch any more!" And she played it extra....for the fun of it!

Be still my heart.