They're Not Pigtails, They're Devil Horns

There are a some guarantees in life -- Michael Phelps will win a gold medal in the Olympics and I will stop for Starbucks while on a road trip. Put money on either thing because you will come out a winner. During our most recent road trip, I dragged the girls into a rest stop under the guise of feeding them dinner, but really, coffee. Because coffee.

World peace will be a real thing when someone figures out the most perfect cup of coffee. We'll all gather, sit in cozy chairs, and share a pot of that magic as we smile and sing Kumbaya.

With pizzas for the girls in one hand and Mila's chubby little fist in my other hand, I stood in line for coffee. Alexis was chatting her head off, as she always is, while we waited patiently. Well, at least two of us were waiting patiently. The other one doesn't understand that word nor does she care to understand that word because she has things to do.

Like explore a shelf filled with tumblers.

Mila looked at the tumblers, and then she looked at me. I looked back at her because seriously. Just stop. KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF, CHILD.

TOO LATE.

Mila went from visually verifying that I was watching to grabbing a tumbler in a snap. She picked it up and casually dropped it to the floor. For funsies. Of course, silly me, I thought it was plastic and that her scheme was about to be ruined but NOPE. Somebody who has never met a Mila decided to put glass tumblers on a low shelf.

And now they had one less tumbler to straighten and dust each morning. So.

As I set out to clean up the shattered glass, I scolded the Bad Idea Queen. Between my scolding and my glaring, the wrong kid found herself under a pile of guilt. Alexis started to apologize profusely, tears in her eyes, because obviously it was all her fault that her sister chose to be a jerk.

Mila, on the other hand, was oblivious to my "MILA, THAT IS NOT NICE STOP IT BAD CHOICE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."

She looked me straight in the eye, smiled, and lifted her arm to sweep all of the tumblers off of the shelf.

The good news is that I've met Mila so I know that she is the Donald Trump of getting into trouble. When she does something dumb and gets caught, she denies that it's dumb and then does it bigger. She double-downs on her jerkiness so frequently that I already had a hand headed her way when she went to sweep a whole shelf of glass to its death, so it was no problem to stop her.

She laughed when I stopped her, and then she tried to sweep the shelf with her other arm.

I stopped that, too.

I may not have any idea how to teach Hurricane Mila that bad ideas should be avoided, but at least I'm developing that Neo superpower that prevents the really bad stuff from happening.