Mommy's Morning Meltdown

Lena and I parted ways this morning with neither one of us very happy with the other. Today is her school Halloween party. She choose to be an Eskimo Princess this year, so this morning I thought it would be perfect to put her hair in braided pigtails.

I know that she's not particularly fond of pigtails, she's convinced they're too babyish, and she hasn't let me put her hair in them in years! However, I felt that it would fit her costume perfectly. Just once, I wanted her to not argue with me. I figured, it's just for dress up so why so why not right? Boy, was I wrong!

She put up a fuss over the whole thing. Long heavy sighs, rolling eyes, whining, the whole nine yards. Incidentally, this only fueled my determination to do it. I finally got her to hold still long enough to put them in and she looked adorable! Even though she was grumbling the whole time, at least she didn't attempt to tear her hair out.

She's also very anti photos these days as well. This is what I managed to get this morning...

The look on her face is what finally tipped me over the edge. I just wanted one good picture. She may not be overly enthusiastic about it, but my family would be. Her aunts, her grandparents, they would love to see her. This fake, bullshit (excuse my language, but it is) smile, caused me to become completely unglued.

"It's not always about what you want! Sometimes, you have to think about the people who love you and would be excited to see how cute you look. No one is going to make fun of you at school. They match your costume for crying out loud. Do you know how many girls would kill to have hair long enough to do that with?" Yeah, mommy went a little psycho.

She didn't cry, but her face did get really red and she stopped speaking to me. I didn't even get a goodbye when she got onto the bus.

Surprise, She is Still Sweet!

I've been in a bit of a blogging lull this week. Truthfully, there's been nothing extremely eventful going on in the Nowhere household. The nice fall weather has faded away here in the Midwest this week and it's morphed into just plain cold speckled with frost. Cold weather makes us, me especially, a little lethargic. When I get up it's dark and now when I get home it's dark. Sorta puts a damper on my usual pep.

James has been working long hours and for the past couple days he's been out at my parent's house at night working on their car. My brilliant, but lost, youngest brother managed to back over something and drive the muffler up into the trunk. Talented right?? He finished the project of replacing it last night and I'm not sure who's more grateful... Him or my parents.

While he's been slaving away being a total sweetheart and helping out, I've been spending some quality bonding time with Lena. Mother daughter alone time is rare with a family of 5, so when the occasion arises I make the extra effort to really spend it focusing on her. Granted while most of it was centered around watching something on TV (again, we don't like cold and the couch blankie is our favorite), it was nice to be cuddled up with her and our spoiled rotten loved furries for several hours this week.

We also finally managed to get around to getting her costume. This went far better than expected. A few weeks back when we first started talking about potential ideas she had informed me she wanted to be "The Darkness." I love her to pieces, but sometimes she's just downright WEIRD!

Okay... So back to the pleasant costume surprise. As we browsed through the Halloween store, she loaded me up with plenty of creepy costumes: skeleton bride, dead cheerleader, bloody zombie.... AND...

I think I about fell over with joy when she chose not to be some terribly horrifying bloody dead creature! There really is a sweet child in there still... Somewhere.

I've been enjoying this sudden appearance this week of my sweet little girl. The one who doesn't want to be "The Darkness" and wants to cuddle up with her mommy. I'm pretty sure she's only here for a visit until she retreats back into her moody hormonal tween shell again, but I'll take what I can get when I can get it. Beggars can't be choosers right?