Amazing

At Alexa's 1 year well visit, I asked her pediatrician if he could recommend a book to me on how to raise a strong willed child.  I told him, "I typically don't believe in psychology books.  My mother and her mother and her mother and her mother . . .  you get the picture, figured it out without all that psycho babble, but I think I need one with Alexa."  And he said, "I totally understand where you're coming from.  My wife and I thought we were great parents and thought all of our friends who were struggling just weren't good parents.  Then we had my daughter.  It turns out we weren't good parents, we had an easy kid!"  That man perfectly verbalized my life with my children.  When I had Andrew, I was fantastic parent who knew EVERYTHING.  It was all those other people who didn't know what the heck they were doing, if they would have just asked me I would have been able to solve all of their problems.  Then I had Alexa and it turns out, maybe I'm not all that great of a parent, it was just the first kid was easy. 

So the other day, Andrew was playing with his super heroes here in the living room and Alexa was being a total brat to him.  She was doing anything and everything possible to aggravate the hell out of him.  Throwing toys, moving things, touching things.  Andrew was doing a great job, not retaliating, but he sort of lost his cool when he realized I was laughing.  "I don't know why you're laughing!!!  This is NOT funny!"  I said, "Dude, I'm not laughing because it's funny.  I'm laughing because I'm amazed at how bad she is!"  He didn't think it was amazing at all.  I explained that amazing doesn't mean good, amazing means, "Wow.  I cannot believe this."

Another day, I was standing in the bathroom fixing my hair and Alexa comes tearing around the corner and she's clearly doing something NAUGHTY.  She's sort of hunched over something and making a mad dash to where I am.  She dashes in, and puts something in the trashcan.  Then she walks away, calm, and cool as a clam.  She had done nothing wrong.  She was the picture of innocence.  I look in the trashcan and she had thrown Andrew's ipod away!!!!!!  I was "amazed" at her.  I mean seriously.  That's pretty doggone smart.  She knew what she was doing was bad, the way she ran and then acted totally innocent- tells you that.  Plus, she knew it was something valuable to Andrew and she knew the trash would be the ultimate insult to him. 

A week ago we went to the beach with friends.  Alexa was rather bossy to our friend's 5 year old girl and quite honestly she was sometimes straight up ugly.  One night she was being so ugly to the little girl about not letting her sit down, that she made her cry.  Alexa made an older girl cry!  I was horrified (she got bodily removed and missed out on seeing some animals up close at the animal experience we were doing).  When I brought her to school this week, I asked her teachers if she was mean like that to the other kids.  They said, "No!  She's not mean, but she is the teacher's helper." Huh? "Yeah, if we tell one of the students "No." and they don't listen, then she'll go get the child, and bring them over to us to be dealt with."  OMG!!  Really?  Someone needs to get that girl under control before she takes over the world! 

I have long thought Alexa should have been the first child.  Mostly I thought that because she is so monopolozing of attention, but clearly she needs someone to be in charge of, as just being in charge of herself is not enough of a challenge for her.  I can assure you, it's a challenge for me!!!  I've done more internet searching for books and tips in the last 2 years, than I've done in Andrew's 7.  I'm told over and over that she's going to be amazing as she gets older- I'm starting to wonder if that's a positive amazing or another kind.