Seriously

At the end of the day, Mila does what she wants. All of the so-called responsible adults in her life can give her guidance, but anything beyond that is a waste of energy. Unless she's doing something that I can physically stop her from doing, it's up to her. She makes her own way.

That "physically stop her" thing is complicated, by the way. For example, let's say the kid should NEVER take toys to school with her. That seems like something I could stop from happening, but IT'S NOT. AT ALL. In fact, that was one of the earliest battles that we fought and I realized I couldn't win. If Mila didn't carry a toy in, she shoved a small one in her pocket. She might have shoved a bigger one in her backpack. She most certainly found a way to do what she wanted. Period.

This is a personality trait that's going to be FANTASTIC when she's an adult. Right now, though? RIGHT NOW IT SUCKS.

In general, the most effective way to try to talk Mila out of something is to help her to see the potential consequences. Let's go back to that taking a toy to school thing. There are a lot of things that can go wrong when you haul a toy you love to a daycare center. Have you seen Toy Story 3? IT'S SCARY WHAT CAN HAPPEN. Sometimes I can get Mila to see the dangers of her decisions and she will change her mind.

I've never managed to change her mind about taking toys to school. She does it every single day and every single day I warn her that it's a bad choice.

She believes me now. It only took five years ...

Mila is obsessed with all things Minions right now. Today she wore a Minion romper with matching yellow shoes. And, of course, she took a Minion with her to school. It was King Bob, actually.

So King Bob went to school. King Bob also stayed at school because some of us cannot be trusted to keep track of all of the things that are important to our tiny people. I seriously just plain forgot to grab King Bob because Mila has dance camp this week and I was hustling. On top of that, Mila would not stop talking about how much she needed a drink of water when I was trying to drag her over to the car. I had just bought her a bottle of water and it was in the car, so if she would have stopped talking, she would have gotten what she wanted sooner. Still, I was distracted. So was Mila.

King Bob was cool at school. There are other toys for him to play with, after all. I really didn't need Mila to suddenly realize she forgot Bob hours past daycare closing time.

And HOOBOY did Mila suddenly realize she had a dilemma. There was much yelling and scurrying and then she flat-out demanded that I drive her back to school so she could get her best friend (you know, the best friend she didn't care about last week). Obviously, I was all "Pshaw. Deal with it. You can get him tomorrow." I even added a whole, "I told you so!" to the mix for good measure.

Mila doesn't care if it's her own fault. She wants me to go fix it. Now.

So hours went by with Mila fussing and yelling and me just plain not caring. It was then that Mila turned to me and in the most serious of serious voices said, "You're no superhero."

I don't really know what Mila meant by that, but I'm officially scared of her.