Day Eighty-Five

Summer is off to a great start. And by "great," I mean "Uuuuuuugh."

So far, the inmates are running the asylum, so to speak. I'm buried with work, so the girls are left to their own devices. Mostly that means they are free to swim and jump on the trampoline and play in the playhouse (it's built!) as much as they want. They also have free reign with the TV and whatever other small screens they can find. It's not entirely different than how I spent my summers when I was their ages, except without friends. We may be in the "green phase" in Pennsylvania, but that doesn't mean I'm quite ready to ship the girls off to other people's houses to do whatever while I work. We're still mostly locked down.

The biggest challenge, so far, is getting Alexis to stop reading and Mila to stop staring at a phone. Those are their most common activities, which is fine, except that they both know how to take it too far. Alexis will straight up forget to do basic things like eat lunch if you don't interrupt her read-a-thons. Mila is equally focused.

OR SO I THOUGHT.

Earlier this week, I had a call that I super needed to focus on. All kinds of people with more important titles than me were on it, so I was fully engaged.

And so was Alexis.

While Alexis was happily reading in some corner, Mila suddenly decided she knew how to put my old cell phone down. She interrupted her very busy gaming schedule to partake in one small activity - cutting her hair.

Oh, but she did.

She pulled all of her hair until a side ponytail and *wack*. She took a good six inches off.

Which, whatever. Most kids go through that rite of passage, but MILA. Mila's hair doesn't grow. Her attempt at being a beautician equated to her second ever haircut. In six years. So, that's fun. Also fun is the fact that the kid immediately figured out that actions have consequences and HOOBOY WAS SHE PISSED.

Mila straight-up sobbed for an hour because she was so angry that her hair was too short. Or at least some of it was because she only really cut one side. I let her wallow in that anger, too. She started out the whole thing blaming everyone except the person who picked up a pair of scissors and chopped, which is WAY high on my list of pet peeves. Take responsibility for your own stupid, please. It's not that hard to look around and go, "You know what? I made that choice. And here's where it got me."  The fact that Mila didn't sent me into the sort of rage where you just walk away and go back to work.

For hours Mila was angry. HOURS. She moped and she whined and all of it was met with, "You made a bad choice. I can't undo it." So that was fun. But then when Mila finally got tired of hearing that I wasn't going to let her blame me for her act of stupidity, she changed her story. By bedtime, the kid had her story revised. She started walking around saying, "It's okay! I cut my hair by accident, but it'll grown back! It's just hair!"

That's super not fair. I want the kid to have weeks of regret.

Which is why I will use a goldfish to yank the toenails out of any human who tells her that her now-fixed hair looks cute. NO COMPLIMENTS, Y'ALL. Not unless it's an officially sanctioned haircut.