Mila Never Gives Up

There are definitely kids who are worse, but that's only because there are ALWAYS kids who are worse. Mila still ranks high on the sucktacular scale as sucky when it comes to long car rides. She does fine running around town, but stringing multiple hours together leads to her figuring out that you've strapped her in and she can't move and GAAAAH! She wants to rip faces off.

The child does not like to be forced to sit still. It's a thing.

Fortunately, I have gotten smarter with age. I've also become better at reminding people how very terrible it was the last time we took her somewhere, so maaaaaybe listen to me and time our drives better? Yes?

Yes.

While some people prefer to get up in the morning to drive far away, I have officially pulled the Mila Card and forced a ban on morning driving. We shall always travel late in the evening amen. Late in the evening increases the odds of Mila falling asleep and leaving us with peace and quiet. Driving to Indiana for Thanksgiving this week, my plan worked really well. Driving back, though?

Welp.

Let's just say that Mila effectively made her point that we should never ever stop for gas. No matter what. We especially shouldn't do so after midnight because she turns into a Gremlin after midnight. Basically, we stopped for gas, the dogs turned into jerks (as they always do), and Mila ended up awake.

AND WOOBOY WAS SHE PISSED.

Mila screamed all the way from Wheeling to Pittsburgh. I kept trying to get her to use her words, which she met with, "NO! I don't wanna use my words!" followed by intense screaming. She wasn't even amused when I pointed out that by refusing to use words, she was using words. and whoops. She got madder when I applied logic.

Anybody got a solar car we could use for Christmas? I'm thinking if we just don't stop for gas, we might be fine.

The Energizer Kitty

That thing I do where I try to teach my girls to not have the same hang-ups and short-comings I do is apparently going REALLY well because I officially have two kids who like large crowds of people. Alexis is happiest standing at the center of Times Square, surrounded by a wall of humanity. Mila takes things a step further and legit energized by big crowds. Like, she FEEDS off their energy.

Case in point, she went to the Steelers game on Thanksgiving day and didn't murder anyone. In theory it should be a terrible idea to take a 2-year old to a football game that doesn't start until her bedtime. In reality, though, she was totally fine. She was totally fine in her usual BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE THIS IS AWESOME BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE sort of way.

She knew she was cheering for the Steelers, by the way. There was a lot of "here we go" falling out of her mouth. What she didn't know was WHEN to cheer for the Steelers. Given that the crowd was about 60/40, when the Colts did something good, Mila cheered along with 60% of the fans. When the Steelers did something good, she jumped aboard the Pittsburgh train and cheered with the other 40%.

She'll learn. It's all good.

While I knew that she feeds off the energy of crowds, I didn't quite expect what came next. I thought jumping in the car at nearly midnight would lead to immediate sleep. I thought wrong. I thought arriving at our hotel room super late would lead to immediate sleep. I thought wrong.

You guys, this went on for well over half an hour.

A video posted by Burgh Baby (@burghbaby) on Nov 24, 2016 at 9:38pm PST

Mila only went to sleep, at OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS O'CLOCK, because I pinned her down with a mega cuddle and wouldn't let her move. She eventually grew bored and fell asleep. Eventually.

Remind me not to allow her around crowds after 8:00 pm ever again. Because oof.

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