I Don't Know

One of my kids waited until 2nd grade to master the art of playing dumb when it benefited her. The other one is an early bloomer and such.

HI, MISS MILA.

Miss Mila absolutely understand numbers. She can count past twenty and she definitely understands the concept of numbers. I dare say that if she's in the mood to admit to such things, I could show her three cookies and ask her how many she'd have if I took one away and she'd know the answer.

Buuuuut, there's a good chance she'll act a fool and pretend she has no idea what I'm talking about if I ask her that question. It's about 50/50. Sometimes she clearly gets it, but other times she basically twists her hair, tilts her head, and says, "Like, what are, like, numbers and stuff?"

She plays dumb REALLY well, you guys. REALLY, REALLY well.

We legit had this conversation the other day.

Me: "How many pieces of candy are there?"

Her: "I don't know."

Me: "Let's count. One ... two ... what's next?"

Her: "I don't know!"

We repeated that little thing for a few minutes. I tried to get her to practice counting things a dozen times and she acted like she had never heard of such a crazy thing before. Finally, I gave up and handed her a piece of candy while putting the rest away.

Mila was stunned by that who "put the rest away" thing.

"I need more candy!" she declared. She "needs" things these days, by the way. She doesn't say she wants anything, she says she neeeeeeeeeeds them. It's very clever, if you think about it. It's just not clever enough to work on me.

"No. You can have one piece," I replied.

"I need two pieces!" Mila said.

"Nope. You get one."

"Mila needs three pieces of candy," she replied.

We went back and forth for a minute, with Mila repeatedly demonstrating that she knows numbers and stuff. I stuck with nope because I am evil. By the end of it, she had clearly counted out ten pieces of candy as she tried very hard to convince me to give them all to her.

Worse, though, is what happened later. I put the candy away because, again, I'm evil. Mila got to eat her one piece and that was that.

Except it wasn't because Miss Mila later busted into the pantry, climbed the shelves, and helped herself to a nice handful of candy. I caught her sitting in the pantry with a pile of wrappers in her hands.

"Mila, where did the candy go?" I asked.

SHE THREW THE WRAPPERS IN THE AIR, JUMPED UP, AND SAID, "I DON'T KNOW!" Then she started acting like she was looking for it.

If she gets better at faking dumb, I'm going to be in big trouble. Big, big trouble.

A Little Less Conversation Should Have Been SHUT UP, RYAN

One thing is for certain - Alexis can never be friends with Joe McIntyre. In order to be friends with Joe McIntyre, you have to have at least an inkling of appreciation for Frank Sinatra and Alexis does not. In fact, Alexis has negative appreciation for Frank. He is boring and dumb and jokes about alcoholism way too much and ... wait ... that wasn't the real Frank.

That was "Almost Sinatra" and it's a good thing we weren't there to see him because HOOBOY did Alexis not enjoy a concert with him. She so badly loathed every second of him singing that she asked to leave before the whole reason we were there took the stage.

Elvis.

Yes, I am that awesome. I am the mom who took her Elvis-loving 10-year old to a concert featuring an Elvis impersonator.

Once Alexis suffered through the horror that was Frank, fake Elvis took the stage and it was GAME ON. If you'd expect a concert featuring a fake Elvis that's held at the Monroeville Convention Center to be full of hilarious cheesiness, you are correct! And it was amazing!

At first.

For the first half of the fake Elvis concert, Alexis was in her own personal heaven. He sang many of her favorite songs and it was everything I had hoped it would be. Everyone was seated at a table and yet my girl managed to get her groove on even with her booty parked in a chair. But then a weird thing happened. The weird thing was probably 75 years old and super pissed that fake Elvis wouldn't sing the song she wanted to hear. She stood at the edge of the stage yelling at fake Elvis and he yelled right back. Well, not literally, but he did roll his eyes at her, tell her to go have a bunch more drinks and FOR REAL, FAKE ELVIS FOUGHT WITH A GRANDMA IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

Days later, I still don't have words to describe how odd the whole scene was. It wasn't funny odd, either. It was the kind of odd that makes you want to slink to the back of the room, sneak out the door, and pretend you weren't there. Unless, of course, you're the two women who interrupted the fight by running up to the stage and demanding a selfie. In the middle of the concert. In the middle of the fight between an elderly fan and a fake Elvis during the middle of a concert.

I don't even know.

And then things got weirder. Apparently fake Elvis forgot to check his ego at the door and he started making fun of the audience. A lot. He called women out and told them to drink more and made fun of them for dancing and generally acted a jerk. That was between singing songs that nobody knew, which IT'S ELVIS. How hard is it to look through his list of songs and find the ones that people know? What kind of devoted crazed superfan knows about Crawfish? NOT ALEXIS. Or me. Or the women that were at the table behind us.

From the obscure weird songs and odd mocking of the crowd, it went straight downhill. Fake Elvis took advantage of the average age of the audience (easily 70+) and started acting a fool. First he started wiping his nasty sweaty armpits (I AM NOT KIDDING) on scarves and throwing them out to the crowd. I'm going to pretend I didn't see some grandmothers fighting over those nasty sweaty scarves because I'd rather not think that some women can't figure out how disgusting that is.

Senility is cruel.

Between all of the sweaty scarves there was a moment when he called everyone up to the stage and went grandma by grandma kissing the "fans." If you're wondering why every elderly woman in Pittsburgh has some sort of communicable disease this week, THERE YOU ARE. FAKE ELVIS SPREAD THAT.

You guys, fake Elvis is probably in his 30s. His parents were working the souvenir table a few feet from the stage. It cost a whopping $30 for a ticket to that show. There were a few hundred grandmothers who shelled out that $30 only to be mocked and ridiculed by a guy who has made a career out of looking and sounding like a dead guy.

It was even more horrifying than it sounds.

It was so bad that Miss Alexis, she who worships all things Elvis, asked to leave early. I made her suffer through the last few songs, but then had to spend the next hour telling her not to let some jerk ruin the real Elvis for her.

Seriously, Ryan Pelton, aka Fake Elvis, managed to ruin all the good karma Uncle Jesse built up over the years.

It's going to take a lot of episodes of Full House to fix this mess. Poor Alexis.

A Happy Mila is the Best

Maybe if I write the words, I'll finally remember them -- Mila loves when we do something new. Forget routine and predictable days, the girl thrives on changing things up. I need to remember that because I keep forgetting and we fall into a rut, but then we do something fun and I'm all "OMG SHE IS SO HAPPY WEEEEEE!"

Pumpkin patch. Corn maze. Those things are wonderful and fantastic and amazing.

If ever you are in a situation where your life is literally dependent on escaping a maze, IGNORE MILA'S DIRECTIONS. She is terrible and awful at navigating people out of a maze. Do. Not. Follow. Her.

If you need someone to feed goats, though, Mila is your expert. She will happily feed goats for hours and hours and hours. She doesn't care if the goats headbutt her. She doesn't care if the goats taste her pigtails. She doesn't care if the goats lick her hands and try to eat her. She really super likes feeding the goats, y'all.

And she likes roaming through the fields of pumpkins.

Basically, everything about going to a pumpkin patch is a good thing as far as Mila is concerned. Maybe that's why the thing that happened just before we left was a thing that she thought was hilarious. Maybe she was just delirious from all of the fun and she giggled because she had been giggling for hours. Or maybe she's really enough of a nut to think this was fun.

The mission: jump from the top of the hay to the soft pile of hay below.

Except the big girls forgot to make sure Mila jumped high enough and, well, just know she came up laughing and asking to do it again.

We gotta do more fun stuff. The photos alone are worth it.