Oh, Mila

There's this thing I've done with Alexis FOREVER that's been coming in super handy lately. Every day, I make her tell me the best thing about her day. She also gets to tell me the worst part of her day, so there's balance, but mostly the exercise serves to make her find some good even if the rest of the day was total crap. 

Which, hi. The worst thing about today? Harvey. Absolutely, positively everything about the flooding left behind by Hurrican Harvey is the worst. The photos and videos are all-consuming and worrying and just plain awful. I don't have words for how hard the whole thing is to watch.

The best, though. There's value in digging through the bad to find something good, so let me just say that the best thing about today is that Mila is a tattletale.

Expert level tattletale.

Mila tattles as a survival instinct. She most certainly doesn't think rules are important. She's not mortified that someone is breaking a rule and therefore she has to draw attention to it. Nope. She tattles to make her life better.

Exhibit A: If Alexis tells Mila "no," even in a completely justified way, Mila will start sobbing and tattling. "Alexis told me noooooo," she'll choke out between tears. It would be super effective except that Alexis is probably right if she's telling the younger one to stop with something. One of them has a more developed sense of self-preservation and it most certainly isn't the one that sits on top of tables all of the time.

Exhibit B: Mila sells out every adult in her life. She doesn't do it to get anyone in trouble. Rather, she's looking to pit them against each other. She will flat-out tell me that Daddy gave her a piece of candy. Her goal is to convince me that I should give her two pieces of candy. She wants everyone to compete for her love.

The best, though. The best was today when Mila decided she was going to tattle on the cat. The first problem with her plot was that she picked Max to tattle on and Max is THE BEST. I'm sorry if you think you have the best cat ever. You are wrong. *I* have the best cat ever. Max is my cat, but he's taken a bit of a leave of absence while Mila outgrows the Hot Mess phase. Now that she's less nutty, he's willing to reclaim his spot in my lap. He lent it to Mila for a few years, you see. 

Mila wants full custody, though. That means she's all about tattling on Max for breathing. Heaven help us all if he does more than breathe in her presence. Today Mila started out by tattling on him for being on the couch. She then launched into a series of complaints about how he was sitting on her blanket. Finally, she tattled because he was purring.

PURRING.

Mila felt it was a reportable offense that a cat was purring out loud.

I love that you can always count on a toddler to deliver a little hilarity on the days when the good is hardest to find.