I don't know if anyone reads this thing anymore, but I had to write this story. I'm finding out that so many of my quirky tendencies seem to be genetic. I don't know that Penny could have picked up on them at such a young age to put them in the "nurture" category.
Like her mommy anticipation is a trademark of Penny's. She's been planning her next birthday party since the day after her last one, she has discussed Halloween costumes ad nauseum for months, at Christmas we opened all our presents and instead of wanting to play with her new toys she looked around and said "Can we wrap them up and do it again?"
Now as I've learned this anticipation can be fun IF things go in the perfect way you imagine in your head. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen. For instance a few weeks ago it got up to a balmy 39 and we decided to go have a picnic. Yeah, it's been the longest winter ever....39 felt good. The park was packed with kids. I made the mistake of using the word picnic. Penny flipped out when we weren't putting our chipotle in a basket or sitting on a blanket. This seemed to be worth tears.
The worst part about anticipation is when it is something you are dreading. Of course, this is called worry. I've learned over the past couple years that my worrying is almost always much worse than the actual project/conversation/email turns out to be.. There's this great quote by Mark Twain that I have on my bulletin board at work: "Eat a live frog first think in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. But sometimes it isn't something you can take care of right away and be done with it. This is the story of the chocolate milk.
Penny hates chocolate milk. She's ordered it multiple times when we've been on playdates with friends, but she takes one sip and makes a face. Well, the last 2 birthday parties she has been to only had chocolate milk to drink. In fact the last birthday party was at 9:30 am and they served chocolate milk, chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream. (what?!) It was Penny's worst nightmare. I wasn't there, but I guess she didn't say she was thirsty till after the party. So we got invited to a party at Chucky Cheese. All Penny talked about for days was how much Andrew loves chocolate milk and that's all they were going to have to drink and she was going to be soooo thirsty. She also didn't want the other kids to know she doesn't like chocolate milk (Man, this peer pressure at 4 is tough stuff). We couldn't get through storytime without her asking how she would get a cup of water at Andrew's party. I made a deal that we could put her water bottle in my bag, which seemed to calm her down a little.
Well, of course they didn't have chocolate milk with pizza. They had water and fruit juice. Penny got her water, had a bite of pizza and was off playing games the rest of the time. I pointed out to her later that they didn't have chocolate milk and she said "Oh, yeah. there wasn't any chocolate milk. That's funny."
I guess that's a long story to make me realize how much of my worries are really days of negative anticipation over chocolate milk. Kids can put things into perspective. It actually made me sad to see how worked up she was about it. I know that feeling. I just wonder how we can help her see...it's just chocolate milk.
5 comments:
This is good. I just found a book from college that had 2 pieces of paper in it. One was a demerit sheet that said I was written up for dirty belts at parade. I remember how I was always worried about getting written up. The second was a comic that said "We are going to look back and think these were the good old days." I guess most of my worries are really of the chocolate milk variety. Looking back they all turn into the good old days.
Great post, Laura! Maybe there's a way for Penny to get beyond the long genetic line of worriers. Afterall, it's just chocolate milk. Hmmmm...
I love this story... it is exactly what it feels like as a worrier andn how exhausting it can be (even as a little one).
On a separate note, how cute is it that she asked if you could re-wrap the present to "do it again"??
Oh how I understand this.........your Uncle Dwight was always telling me "Don't worry about a problem until it is a problem!".............I always found that easier said than done......although I think I have gotten better about it........this helps to remember.......it's just chocolate milk!
Sounds like chocolate milk is a popular party beverage. What do they do for those who are lactose intolerant? And that one party- man they didn't seem to care about the pro vanilla people at all. Maybe Penny needs her own re-usable water bottle? Or is that just setting her up to lose it or forget it somewhere?
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