Seriously

At the end of the day, Mila does what she wants. All of the so-called responsible adults in her life can give her guidance, but anything beyond that is a waste of energy. Unless she's doing something that I can physically stop her from doing, it's up to her. She makes her own way.

That "physically stop her" thing is complicated, by the way. For example, let's say the kid should NEVER take toys to school with her. That seems like something I could stop from happening, but IT'S NOT. AT ALL. In fact, that was one of the earliest battles that we fought and I realized I couldn't win. If Mila didn't carry a toy in, she shoved a small one in her pocket. She might have shoved a bigger one in her backpack. She most certainly found a way to do what she wanted. Period.

This is a personality trait that's going to be FANTASTIC when she's an adult. Right now, though? RIGHT NOW IT SUCKS.

In general, the most effective way to try to talk Mila out of something is to help her to see the potential consequences. Let's go back to that taking a toy to school thing. There are a lot of things that can go wrong when you haul a toy you love to a daycare center. Have you seen Toy Story 3? IT'S SCARY WHAT CAN HAPPEN. Sometimes I can get Mila to see the dangers of her decisions and she will change her mind.

I've never managed to change her mind about taking toys to school. She does it every single day and every single day I warn her that it's a bad choice.

She believes me now. It only took five years ...

Mila is obsessed with all things Minions right now. Today she wore a Minion romper with matching yellow shoes. And, of course, she took a Minion with her to school. It was King Bob, actually.

So King Bob went to school. King Bob also stayed at school because some of us cannot be trusted to keep track of all of the things that are important to our tiny people. I seriously just plain forgot to grab King Bob because Mila has dance camp this week and I was hustling. On top of that, Mila would not stop talking about how much she needed a drink of water when I was trying to drag her over to the car. I had just bought her a bottle of water and it was in the car, so if she would have stopped talking, she would have gotten what she wanted sooner. Still, I was distracted. So was Mila.

King Bob was cool at school. There are other toys for him to play with, after all. I really didn't need Mila to suddenly realize she forgot Bob hours past daycare closing time.

And HOOBOY did Mila suddenly realize she had a dilemma. There was much yelling and scurrying and then she flat-out demanded that I drive her back to school so she could get her best friend (you know, the best friend she didn't care about last week). Obviously, I was all "Pshaw. Deal with it. You can get him tomorrow." I even added a whole, "I told you so!" to the mix for good measure.

Mila doesn't care if it's her own fault. She wants me to go fix it. Now.

So hours went by with Mila fussing and yelling and me just plain not caring. It was then that Mila turned to me and in the most serious of serious voices said, "You're no superhero."

I don't really know what Mila meant by that, but I'm officially scared of her.

ONCE is Second, I Think

There's this thing Alexis and I like to do where we argue about which musicals are the best. We agree on the top choice, but from there? HOOBOY CAN WE FIGHT ABOUT IT. Let's get the fact that Hamilton is The Best out of the way. There is no debate there. Don't @ me.

The second best, though. THAT IS HARD. I tend to keep Aida, Aladdin, ONCE, and Wicked in my top 5, but don't ask me to put them in order. They can't be put in order. They all deserve to be second best. It's a tie, okay?

Alexis vehemently disagrees with that list, for what it's worth. It must be hard to be as wrong as she is about this, though. I think I could get her to put Wicked up there, but she has terrible taste in musicals after that. If she were to prefer the classics, I could see her side of things, but mostly she prefers the really bad contemporary shows.

ONCE is a great example of her terrible opinions. I *love* ONCE. So much. It is exactly what would happen if Ed Sheeran were to wake up and *poof* into a musical. It's folksy but adorable and just SO good. Alexis disagrees. While she agrees that the music is phenomenal, it irritates her muchly that it doesn't end with a tidy happy ending.

The kid really super likes a good happily ever after.

I super like musicals that sound a little different than everything else. I happen to like the not-so-tidy ending. I REALLY like some of the innovative ways the set changes and the fact that the people in the show are the singers, dancers, and musicians. The dozen or so of them DO EVERYTHING. It's fantastic. They also never leave the stage which is just plain cool.

ANYWAY.

ONCE is currently showing at the Benedum. If you loved it when the Broadway tour came through a few years ago, you should go see this one. It's a completely different set, but the same well-told story and music that climbs into your soul and settles into a good place. There's some local talent starring in the show (good job, Lauren!) which makes it even more fun. If you didn't see it the last time it was in Pittsburgh, you DEFINITELY should go. It's a well-told story that will leave you caring about total strangers and wishing the music would just keep going.

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This is not a sponsored post, though Pittsburgh CLO did provide me with tickets to the show. Don't tell them, but I was going to buy tickets for this weekend. Shhh!

::sigh::

Let the record show, it took five years, two months, and two days for Mila to look at the pond and think to herself, "That's a place where I should be standing," as she crawled in.

That's about three years longer than I would have predicted. Mila is the Queen of Bad Ideas and it just seemed like the kind of bad idea she would have. Alexis, on the other hand, would NEVER. NEVER EVER. NO WAY.

Having kids who are opposites is fun.

ANYWAY. The reason Mila suddenly decided she should stand in the pond is that she has tadpoles she needs to visit. Five of them, to be exact. There is no room in the inn for anything that might be a fish since the mystery Koi will grow up and be huge and the whole thing is going to be too crowded. That means no more feeder fish thrown in for fun, no more picking out fancy comets, nothing. THERE WILL BE NO MORE FISH. So we settle for tadpoles, I guess.

(I'm talking to myself, mostly. If we get more fish, I'll have to make the pond even bigger and LET ME JUST TELL YOU HOW WELL THAT PROJECT GOES. Actually, I'd rather not talk about it.)

So Mila has all of these tadpoles she needs to visit, but they're hard to see in the pond. It totally makes sense that she would crawl in so she can see better, right? It makes even more sense that she has decided she needs to catch them and pet them because it will make them happy.

They didn't say it would make them happy. Tadpoles can't talk. That's why Mila speaks on their behalf. She advocates for them, or so she claims. They just want to be happy and they're happiest when their humans are petting them.

I know. I don't quite believe it either. Mila swears it's true, though.

Obviously, what started out as a bad idea has turned into a terrible idea, so if you were wondering why I keep screeching, "BACK AWAY FROM THE POND!" in my squeakiest, meanest voice, that's it. Mila is going to spend all of her hours cornering the poor tadpoles and I'm going to spend all of my hours telling her to knock it off.

It's the circle of life.