Our Little Baby Blog

Mean Girls

Anna had her first interaction with an alpha female last week. I say that with a bit of a laugh because I am well aware that life will be far more complicated and emotionally heated in about five years, but it's interesting to see the seeds of it now.

Act I
In the depths of stir-craziness last Friday I decided to bundle up the kids and take them to the shopping mall up the street. This particular mall has a huge kids play area that boasts a little train that goes around a track and a treehouse and giant curvy slide. A kids delight. So we packed ourselves up and headed over there, where Anna was in seventh heaven, squealing with delight and running herself silly.

Up and down the treehouse stairs, running around the perimeter, completely ignoring good ol' mom. She was having a blast. At some point though she started running back to me every few minutes. Not upset, just running back to tell me she loved me or say something silly. I didn't think anything of it.

Until we got in the car. Since Mike had gotten home from work early, we stopped by the house and picked him up to go grab dinner. On the way to the restaurant, Mike asked her if she found any other kids to play with at the tree house. "No," she said in a serious voice. "The girl said I couldn't play with her. That she didn't want to play with me."

What? I thought. When did this happen?

"What did you say when she said that, Anna?" I asked.

"I just went over to play by mommy."

Ah... So that's why she ran over to me. I'm not sure exactly what a good parent should have said at that moment. I ended up saying that I was so sorry to hear someone had said that to her. It certainly wasn't a very nice thing to say. But, next time I'm sure there will be even more friends to play with. I gave her extra kisses when I pulled her out of the car and just let it go.

Since she wasn't very outwardly upset, more just sad and probably confused, I didn't mention it again and silently hoped that it's a very long time before we have to have this conversation again. I did spend the next hour or so cataloging every girl I'd seen at the play area, wondering which one had said such a rude thing to Anna.

Act II
And the hits keep coming. On Saturday morning I took Anna to a class at the Morton Aboretum. Such a fantastic place for kids. The class was for 2-3 year-olds and I'd say there were probably about 7 kids there, all were accompanied by parents.

During one of the activities where the kids were gathering in an area of the room together, one girl walked over to Anna - randomly - and grabbed her by the wrist - HARD. As in I could see Anna sort of wincing. The girl's dad jumped up and grabbed her hand and told her to let go (seemed like this happens quite often). So the little girl let go - but just for a second. Then she proceeded to grab the collar of Anna's shirt and yank, nearly toppling Anna. Now in this girl's defense a strong wind could probably blow Anna over. Again, the father intervened quickly and told the little girl that she was getting a time out of she didn't cut it out. Good Dad skills.

So about 15 minutes later, the kids are all gathered round a bowl of water to dip their feathers in and see if they are water repellant (they are!) when this same girl reaches over and grabs Anna's hair and pulls - HARD. I actually let out a WHOAH and reached towards her hand because I knew this was gonna be bad - and painful. But the Dad was totally on it, he yanked her up and had her across the room in a time out within seconds.

Anna, sort of shaken at this point, just looked at me like - what the hell? and then shook it off and proceeded to dip her feather in the bowl.

What a weekend, eh? We're off to a super bowl party now. I'm sure it will be better there.

It will be mostly boys.