Mila with the Victory. Again.

Let's all take a moment to be confused, shall we? There was a point this week when Mila and I needed to deliver dinner to Alexis. Alexis was at dance, but had a 45-minute break. That's not long enough for her to pile into the car and hit a drive thru, but it is long enough for me to pull into the parking lot and let her enjoy being tortured by her little sister while eating. Anyway, I asked Mila what we should get for dinner. Whatever we got was what Alexis would get as well.

Mila asked for salads.

I KNOW.

I know the child likes healthier choices more than she's willing to admit, but it continues to confuse me when she demonstrates it. I, of course, said nothing about the choice because if I comment, Mila will never do it again. Still, I was impressed. So, salads!

The trick with Mila and Alexis getting salads for dinner is that neither one of them can eat a whole one, so they usually share one. In this case, it made sense for Mila to go ahead and eat what she wanted while we were driving, but then to hand over the rest to her sister. There was the risk that Mila would eat all of the best parts of the salad, but Alexis generally doesn't mind because she's the kid who will happily eat plain lettuce and be delighted with it.

Don't ask me to explain that. I don't understand it either.

Regardless, Mila ate what she wanted, Alexis jumped in the car and ate a bunch, but then decided to go back inside dance. For whatever reason, she took the rest of the salad with her. There is a "dining area" set up outside of dance and they pretty strictly enforce social distancing in that space, so whatever. Take your salad, child.

Fast forward a few hours and we picked Alexis up for the night. The first words out of Mila's mouth were, "Where's my salad?" to which Alexis replied, "I finished it."

HOOOOBOY. WRONG ANSWER, ALEXIS.

I solved the problem by offering a quick drive thru snack, but before I got to that point, there was dRaMa. I ended up reminding Mila that the plan all along was for her to eat as much as she wanted and then her sister would get the rest.

Mila's reply?

"Those were your words, not mine."

I'm stealing that. It's a great comeback for SO many situations.

Dream Crusher

We somehow ended up with a Saturday with almost nothing scheduled, so of course I crammed the day full with a trip to Ohiopyle. Mila had never been there and Alexis hadn't been there in years. In fact, the last time Alexis was there, and she remembers this exactly, she lost a water show while playing in the river. She watched it float away and then get carried away by a waterfall and SHE LOVED THAT SHOE OMG. WHY DIDN'T I SAVE IT?

She's still mad about it. It was AT LEAST eight years ago. The kid doesn't hold grudges or anything. o_O

I think that whole moment of drama and sadness is why we hadn't been there in so long. Alexis has brought the subject of the shoe up a few times over the years, so subconsciously I probably knew it was best to stay away.

ALAS.

The good news is that Alexis recovered after about an hour of hiking along the peninsula. She talked about that damn shoe for the entire hour, but whatever. The bad news is that Mila discovered a reason to bring up Ohiopyle from time-to-time and make me regret EVERYTHING.

Those little black dots are tadpoles. As we were hiking along the peninsula, we came across some really big puddles in the giant rocks and there were THOUSANDS of tiny little tadpoles and frog eggs in the puddles.

Mila was in love.

We've established that she's obsessed with frogs, especially catching and borderline torturing frogs, and there were thousands of smaller potential friends. I had to fuss at the kid at least 24987519387503 times not to put her sticky little paws in the water because the tadpoles were much too young to be handled. I let her sit there and watch them for a solid hour, but touching them would have been a step too far.

But the biggest source of Mila's sadness was that she figured out that there were so many free baby frogs sitting there and she could have taken so many of them home but OMG I WASN'T PREPARED FOR SUCH A MOMENT.

Seriously, the child was PISSED at me because I didn't come armed with a tadpole transportation system. I didn't have so much as a water bottle on me, so there was literally no way for her to catch a few (hundred) of them and add them to her own pond.

I wasn't sad about this, by the way, because while the tadpoles are probably doomed because of where they are, it's not my problem to solve. Gotta let nature do its thing, y'know? And I don't know that they would have survived the two-hour drive. And then there's the fact that our pond fish would probably mistake them for food. Lots of reasons to let them be.

But Mila wanted them.

And it was ALL MY FAULT that her dreams weren't coming true.

So basically we can never go back to Ohiopyle. I can't deal with Little Miss I Lost My Shoe and Little Miss You Crushed My Frog Dreams.

Priorities

One of the little things that I did to make last summer suck a little less was to turn ice cream into an adventure. Pretty much every time we went for a hike, we went in search of a new ice cream place. Bonus points were awarded for a contact-free experience because OBVIOUSLY, but distance? It totally didn't matter. I was willing to drive and drive.

That means we visited pretty much ice cream place in Allegheny County and beyond. It is because of that and additional visits before COVID that I can say with absolute certainty that Kip's > Antney's, Millie's, and literally everywhere else. Don't @ me. I know I'm right.

ANYWAY. The girls rank ice cream places differently than I do. Mila, for example, is nowhere near expert-level in her analysis. If I ask her to pick a super special ice cream place, she picks Turtle Twist in Canonsburg, PA.

Look, there is nothing wrong with Turtle Twist. It's quite a lovely place for roadside custard (... not ice cream, but my children are not experts). In fact, and I will DESTROY a Turtle Sundae given the chance. But Mila orders a Turtle Tail when she's there, which is a chocolate-covered frozen banana.

THAT IS NOT ICE CREAM. AND WE CAN MAKE THOSE AT HOME. THEY AREN'T SPECIAL. PICK ICE CREAM, CHILD. Still, she's entitled to her opinion, no matter how wrong it is. And so, we visited multiple times last year. But then Turtle Twist closed for the winter. There was much sadness when that happened, but as I explained to Mila, a lot of ice cream places close once kids go back to school and the weather chills.

It was with much fanfare that Turtle Twist came back into our lives this spring. Mila has figured out how to ask Alexa the most random of questions, so she knew the exact date the place was opening back up. She had a reminder set and everything, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what the geniuses at Amazon had in mind when they made Echo Dots. Mila insisted we were going on opening day. I negotiated it to the day after because life sometimes doesn't allow for a freakin' long drive just for a frozen banana. It seemed like a reasonable deal.

And then we got there. And Mila was SO excited. I ordered her Turtle Tail. That is a "looking at an actual human" situation, for what it's worth. They don't have a microphone or speaker or whatever, so you pull up to the window, wearing a mask if you aren't a monster, and they write your order down as you say it before handing it out to you through the same window. It's all very quaint.

NORMALLY.

It's not quaint when there's a small child in the back seat who has been thinking about her Turtle Tail for MONTHS and the person at the window is all like, "Sorry we don't have any" and OMG. Mila EXPLODED with disappointment. There was sobbing and she shrunk up into a tiny little ball and she was soooooo sad. Wanna guess how that worker felt? It was quite the extravaganza. I was trying not to laugh because Mila conjured up a whole lot of drama over a FROZEN BANANA OMG, but then there's this woman who was equally dramatic because she felt so bad and Y'ALL. FROZEN BANANAS DO NOT DESERVE SO MUCH DRAMA.

I ordered Mila a substitute item which she complained about the whole way home, but whatever. It all ended with a return trip just for a FREAKIN FROZEN BANANA a week later. And did the woman remember Mila? OF COURSE SHE DID.

The kid could become famous for the drama she can conjure up for a frozen banana.