An Answer for Everything

Once again, I guess I am unprepared for how fast Brianna is growing up. She continually does things that I wouldn't have thought she would do until she was older....like, thinking that she has an answer for everything. Here are 3 little examples:

One of our current struggles is to get her to start cleaning up after herself a little bit. Maybe this is unrealistic but I've been trying to get her to at least tidy up after herself...she leaves little tornadoes of messes in EVERY room. (Usually about 5 minutes after I've cleaned it.) And I'm getting pretty tired of following her around trying to keep up with the mess. So, the other day after she'd pretty much thrown every toy she owns into the middle of her room I said to her, "Hey, your room is a mess. Why don't you and Bogart pick up your room together?" I dunno, Bogart was sitting right there in the room and I guess I thought that maybe she'd find it more fun if the cat was supposed to be helping and would actually clean up some. But, I should have known, she's beyond such childish notions as a cat helping clean up. Instead, she looked at me like I was completely nuts and told me, "But Mom, Bogart doesn't even have any hands!" Smartie-pants!

Most the time I'm quite sure that I'm not getting through to Brianna when I tell her things. Especially if those things I'm telling her involve doing something (or rather, not doing something) that she disagrees with me on. Take my make-up drawer in the master bathroom. Bree likes to be in there with me while I get ready to go and has been known to fish around in my drawer to come up with extra make-up or hairspray...things that I really don't want her playing with since they make horrible messes and so on. (Honestly, after 7 or 8 days in a row cleaning up dark brown eyeshadow off the floor and walls and every inch of your kid, you lose patience with it.) So, every day she tries to sneak something out of there and every day I say, "No. This is Mommy's drawer with Mommy's things in it. You have your own make-up. (Some of my empty powder compacts, etc.) You have your own drawers with Brianna's things in your bathroom." Well, up to this point this hasn't seemed to make a difference or really sink in. I thought I was just getting ignored, until this morning that is. I was lying in bed trying to pretend I was still asleep and catch 10 minutes more of shut-eye while Travis got ready for work. Bree had already jumped out of bed and was in the bathroom with him. I didn't catch what he said to her but suddenly I heard her telling him very clearly, "This is Mommy's drawer and she asked me to not get into it!" Not that that stops her....

Then there was the case of the "great fall". See, not only does she have an answer for everything she always seems to be updating her vocabulary to more grown-up words and phrases. In this case we just got a package of nursery rhyme fun activities. (Each month we get a package of toddler oriented themed activities to do together with a book, music, stickers, etc.) So, we'd been reading and talking about nursery rhymes together and had read about Humpty Dumpty, which was a new story for Bree. A few hours later Bree managed to trip and fall down bad enough to make her cry. But, never one to want to lose her dignity she sucked it up, walked into the room and informed me, "Mom, I had a great fall but I'm okay now!"