Older and Wiser ... ish

I very seriously enjoy this thing where Alexis is more and more fun to be around as she gets older. She's wiser and more conversational and just plain fun.

But.

BUT.

This thing where she gets older and wiser is leading to ... complications.

For example, she who once could be easily deceived is now a ninja with half-truths. She smells them from miles away and asks all of the right questions to get what she wants. Don't bother to tell her she can't sleep over at a friend's house because it's "too far away." She has fourteen solutions to that problem and half of them will leave you seeing stars.

And then there is my mortal enemy lightning. I WANT TO FIGHT YOU, LIGHTNING. I WILL PUNCH YOU OUT.

So. SO. Alexis learned all about lightning at school. She knows that it is electricity and she knows how it's caused and blah, blah, blah ... she knows it is dangerous. She knows that lightning seeks out metal. She knows that lightning can cause a fire.

Hello thunderstorm! Thanks for rolling into town and contributing to my kid's inability to sleep like a normal human!

We started this evening EXACTLY on schedule. Alexis brushed her teeth and went to bed like a perfect little angel. Minutes later, the lightning and rain started. That is how I found myself involved in this conversation:

Alexis, after ninja-ing her way down the stairs and suddenly popping up in my face, scaring the crap out of me: "Momma, I can't sleep."

Me: "ME NEITHER. EVER. NIGHTMARES. GAH!" That's how I respond when I'm clinging to the ceiling because kids shouldn't be able to just appear out of thin air like that.

Alexis: "The lightning is waking me up."

Me: "Close your eyes and you won't be able to see it."

Alexis: "But it's going to start a fire!"

Me: "No, it's not."

Alexis: "But there is a lot of metal in our house! What will happen to the cats and dogs if the house is on fire?"

I responded with a half-assed fire evacuation plan that included me swooping the furry things up on my way out the door. She responded by drawing a very elaborate fire evacuation plan which I will now be recreating in my own handwriting so I can claim it as my own work of genius. Once the plan was done, I told the kid to go back to bed.

Alexis: "But moooooom! The lightning is going to hit our house!" She proceeded to show me some of the metal that is inside our home. There was much fretting happening. MUCH fretting.

The only logical thing to do was to teach the kid how to tell how far away lightning is by counting the time between the lightning flash and thunder. I showed her a web page that proved I wasn't a liar liar pants on fire and then started counting.

There were no booms. We made it all the way to fifteen before we stopped waiting.

"See! The lightning is really far away!" I told her.

That seemed to be enough to calm her fears. I escorted her back to bed, tucked her in, and went back to whatever it is I do when there isn't a small human all up in my space.

Ten minutes later, I heard it. Thunder.

One ... two ... three ...

It takes three seconds from the time you hear thunder until your kid will reappear in your face. I don't think you can translate that to a distance, though. They can do that even if they are MILES away.

"MOMMA!" Alexis fretted. "The lightning is getting closer and it's going to burn our house down and FREEEEEAAAAAK OUT!"

She might not have actually said the words "freak out," but they were heavily implied.

"Did you count how far away it was? I bet it's still far," I replied.

"MOM. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. PENNY HAS METAL ON HER COLLAR AND SHE'S GOING TO BURN UP," Alexis scolded me.

Older. That part I stand by. Wiser, though? I think maybe I need to take that back.

RUN, PENNY, RUN!

Never Steal A Barbie Scooter From A 7-Year Old

It's amazing how quickly we fall back into old routines. As the hours grew long on the first day that the temperatures gave us permission to gather outside, a fire magically appeared in the center of little patio behind the pond. Once the fire pit was burning steady, a bunch of friends gathered around. We count our neighbors amongst that friend list, which is how it came to be that a couple of extra dogs were sitting by the fire with us.

The s'mores were a few hours away, so Alexis was busying herself with toys. She had a hula hoop and a scooter, so she was happy. The adults were chatting and carrying on, with Alexis occasionally interrupting so that she could reassert her role as The Queen of All of Us.

And then it happened. In a flash, the neighbor's black lab took off running towards the street. She's normally a stay-er type of dog, but every once in a while she likes to prove that she's still got it. She took off running and running, in pursuit of a dog at the end of a leash as it was being walked around the neighborhood.

Our neighbor dashed into action. In his quest to be more efficient in chasing down his dog, he randomly decided it would be a fantastic idea to borrow Alexis' pink Barbie scooter. He rolled his way down the driveway just fine, but then he hit grass. Rather than jump off of the scooter, he tried to roll the scooter through the lawn.

The key word in that sentence is "tried."

He failed in a magnificently spectacular way and found himself kissing the grass. His feet flew up and tapped him on the back of the head as he ate a nice pound or so of dirt. He sprung back up and went after the dog, ignoring the giant scratch that he had earned when he face-planted on the ground.

During the cacophony, Alexis was the focus of my attention. I missed most of the magnificent face-plant because I was watching her as she yelled, "HEY! THAT'S *MY* SCOOTER!" and went running. As the neighbor performed his graceful act, I watched Alexis chase him down the drive way, snatch her now abandoned scooter, and return back to the gathering of adults.

"MOM. Why did he steal my scooter?" she asked, completely oblivious to the crumpled pile of human in the front yard. She was tattling in that way that 7-year olds do so well. She was genuinely indignant than someone had dared to touch her precious Barbie scooter. As Alexis was tattling to her momma, the neighbor returned, dog in tow. He was greeted by a chorus of laughter because OMG DID YOU SEE THAT? HE TOTALLY FACE-PLANTED.

And that is how Alexis learned all about karma.

Don't steal a 7-year old's scooter, yo.

Givers and Takers

Somewhere between buying, no joke, 617 plastic eggs and the night I helped Alexis fill every last one of them with candy or a special treat, I had a moment of very serious thinking. It dawned on me that there are two types of people in this world -- the Givers and the Takers.

The Takers irritate the hell out of me. They suck you dry as they take and take and take and then the jerks go and forget to so much as say "thank you." They think they world owes them for some reason. They've been wronged and OMG IT'S THE WORST DAY EVER and waaaaaaah!

But then there are the Givers. The Givers put out all kinds of positive energy as they give the universe more than they expect back. They're the people who make you smile when they pay you a compliment. They're the people who think of you before they think of themselves. They are everything I aspire to be.

(Dawn was a Giver, by the way. I wish you all could have known her. She was the beautiful soul who inspired me start to think about the people who give more than they take.)

That moment of seriousness was crashed by a certain little short person. She was picking through the special treats and deciding which of her friends she hoped would find what. I was thinking that she almost gets it, that she's well on her way to being a Giver, when she took a detour to Taker Land and decided she was going to cheat at the post-Easter egg hunt so she could keep a certain special prize.

She's seven. There's lots of time for her to figure out that Givers walk around feeling much better than Takers. She'll get there.

Then the day of the post-Easter gathering of friends arrived. 617 eggs were hidden and a bunch of really fantastic kids ran around and stuffed the eggs in baskets.

Alexis did not manage to get the special egg she wanted so very badly. She didn't take it well. At all. There were tears and a hissy fit and general immaturity and greediness.

But it was countered by some moments of generosity. So there's that.

It was while I was quietly observing some of those moments of generosity that I realized it. As I sat in my backyard swimming in sunlight (finally! spring!), I listened to the laughter and sounds of a yard full of Givers. Bunches of them.

Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I let a Taker into my life. It never lasts, though. Eventually I figure it out and refocus my energy.

It's good to be surrounded by Givers.