Thanks, Alexis

I tell Alexis this all of the time, but it's worth noting here - I don't know how I would manage to tame the three-ring circus that is Mila without a big sister to act as the ringmaster. It's especially evident when we run errands.

It took three tries -- THREE -- for me to purchase the fabric to make Mila's Halloween costume. The first two tries Alexis had the nerve to have a life separate from the rest of us, so I was alone in my attempts to keep Mila from burning the store down. I succeeded in my fire prevention mission, but it involved lots of running laps around the store, a horrifying incident with a mountain of glitter, and leaving empty-handed.

It was bad.

The third time I went to the fabric store, Alexis was with us. She happily grabbed Mila's hand and checked out the displays near to where I needed to shop. I walked out with the needed fabric and a My Little Pony hat, so I consider that trip a win.

There is some mutual benefit stuff happening with the big sister greatness, for what it's worth. Alexis uses Mila as a source of entertainment, saving her from being bored while I adult. I adult without losing my mind, so there's my win. Mila seems to find hanging out with Alexis to be way more fun than torturing me, so we're all winning a gold medal.

Today's gold medal game involved a very quick stop at the grocery store. Vegetables for fried rice were on the list, so we ran through the produce and frozen departments very quickly with plans to be in and out of the store in less than five minutes.

But then Mila made it clear that she wanted to eat right that second. She would have been fine with eating the package of broccoli, plastic wrap and all, but I deemed that unacceptable.

"You can each pick a small bag of chips," I told the girls. I knew it would take an hour for us to get home and me to get dinner on the table, so a little snack was probably an excellent idea.

Alexis practically jumped for joy because HOOOOBOOOY! CHIPS! MOM NEVER LETS ME HAVE CHIPS! She started walking her way around the display, and walking some more, and walking some more because decisions are hard, yo.

So hard.

For Alexis. Mila rocks the decision thing. She took one look at the display, grabbed the bag that was closest to her, and was ready to party.

But not Alexis. She kept inspecting each and every bag of chips on the display. It should be noted that there were a lot of chips there. Pretty much every kind of salty goodness you can imagine was available as a choice. Alexis searched and debated and generally did a very bad job of being decisive.

I just stood there waiting, with one eye on Mila to make sure she didn't start a fire and the other eye on Alexis as she picked things up and set them down and repeated the process again and again and again. As this was happening, I was certain Mila was going to bolt. If I take her to a store and spend more than 0.0000002 seconds looking at something, she's gone. But Alexis? For Alexis she will wait.

Patiently.

Sooooo patiently.

As she waited and waited and WAITED for Alexis to make a decision, Mila did the only logical thing a person can do in that situation. She sat down, ripped her chips open, and started snacking. Right smack in the middle of the store. Mila held herself a little "I'm waiting for my sister" picnic.

Someday she'll hold a picnic for me, right? Someday? Maybe?

Me: 0, Mila: 24587239813

Hey. So. This is going to be super surprising, but guess who stopped being willing to sit in a highchair last week? What's that? Your money is on the Tiny Human with The Big Personality?

DING! DING! DING!

I have no idea where she got the idea that highchairs are a negotiable item, but there it is. Mila thought that if she screamed every time someone lowered her into her highchair, she would magically wind up eating her dinner in my lap.

Which, NOPE. All the nopes in Nopelandia. Noooooope! Well, mayb ... NOPE. The nopes are so serious that I was willing to wage war over the topic. Thus, Saturday's dinner looked like this.

 

For the first twenty minutes, I patiently waited for the baby who loves/hates me to figure out that yelling wasn't getting her anywhere. The next twenty minutes involved less patience, but just as much yelling.

Sorry, neighbors. You probably thought really bad things were happening in our house. Actually, what happened is that I put Mila in a highchair and handed her food. I KNOW! I AM TERRIBLE! THE ACTUAL WORST!

Right around the 45 minute mark, it occurred to me that I might be looking at the world's most persistent baby. The intensity of her anger hadn't diminished at all, even though I knew she had to be starving. It was an hour past her normal dinner time. Surely she would give in!

Nooooope.

At the 50 minute mark, I decided to up the ante. I dug into the Halloween candy (which will be gone before Halloween gets here, obviously), found a pack of Peanut Butter M&Ms, and handed one to Mila.

She threw it at my head. While yelling. Then she yelled some more because there was a perfectly good M&M and it wasn't within her reach.

I gave her another one.

My logic was that if she was given a food she loves, she would have a hard time remembering that she was mad. And my logic was wrong because even while the kid had blue food dye dripping down her face, she kept yelling. She managed to continue her yelling while she furiously shoveled candy into her face.

Surely it would end soon.

I gave her another pack of M&Ms.

My logic still sucked. She kept yelling with the fiery rage of her Pixar twin, Jack Jack.

I went for a third pack.

She kept yelling. She stopped eating because, of course, she's Tiny Human and tiny humans don't have that much space for food. She was full. But she kept yelling! She yelled right up until the moment when I pulled her out of her highchair. Then she smiled and ran off to play.

Now for the good news. I never caved! I made that child sit in her highchair! And she ate her dinner! I mean, obviously I won the game. It's not like Mila proved that if she yells for a really long time, she'll get to eat candy for dinner.

. . . Oh.

(Making it even more fun? She will sit in her booster seat. It's entirely different from a highchair, obviously.)

(Toddlers are insane. It's a fact.)

Superpower Unlocked

For a while now, I've tried to find the words that adequately describe Mila's personality. Finally, a few weeks ago, it occurred to me -- there aren't words.

There is video, though.

We've seen Mila before, only her name was Jack Jack when she starred in a little movie called The Incredibles. Sweet and cuddly and just plain amazing ... unless she's mad. When Mila is mad, there is not a person in the tri-state area who is oblivious to her opinion. The child goes from giggly and smiling to fire-breathing dragon just

like

that.

I have lots of stories about how very opinionated Miss Mila is, some of which I won't share in this space because the child should get to grow up without the stories told in a public way. But HOOBOY. So many stories. So many opinions.

And this is where I explain The Shoe Thing that's been happening over on Instagram.

It started about a week ago -- Miss Mila is just on the edge of outgrowing the greatest shoes ever made for a baby, her Converse, but she's not quite there. It's close. Very close. I would guess I should be able to get another two weeks out of them.

But I won't.

Because Mila won't wear them anymore.

By "Mila won't wear them anymore" I mean Mila turns bright red, breaths fire, and rips a hole in the space-time continuum as she violently flips out if anyone tries to put them on her. She walked those shoes over to the closet a week ago, threw them in, and that was that. She's done.

Which, that's a sad state of affairs because those shoes rule, but the day was coming. It's fine. Truly. It's also fine because I happened to already have a little stash of shoes in her closet that are bigger than the Chuck's. Clearance topped with Cartwheel discounts and blah, blah, blah, months ago I picked up some shoes in various sizes for less than $5 per pair.

I pulled out two pairs of nearly identical Target shoes to get her through while I started hunting for a new pair of Converse.

Except, not.

Because she won't take off the polka-dot Target shoes.

Ever.

The first time I noticed the issue was an evening when we were in a store and there were fancy Converse on clearance for $12. BINGO! I grabbed a pair to have her try on and Miss Mila lost her ever-loving mind the second I unhooked the velcro on her polka-dot shoes. She threw herself to the ground and screamed. Oh, she screamed.

She stopped screaming the very second I set down the Converse.

Another day went by and Alexis tried to put Mila's sandals on her one morning. It didn't end well.

And then Mila started to insist that she put her shoes back on after getting into her pajamas. That quickly escalated to HELL NO YOU AREN'T TAKING THEM OFF fire-breathing dragon shenanigans when it was time for bed.

So she has slept with shoes on two nights in a row.

Some battles aren't worth fighting, I suppose. I'm thinking it's wise to skip this battle because I need to figure out how to defeat the opinionated little imp that is Mila.