Alana Funny

Okay, sorta anyway.

Alana has this thing about writing on her walls, dresser, shelves, cupboards.....you get the idea. The other night, Bruce sent her to her room to clean it. Now her room is the size of a large closet, so it doesn't take much for it to look like a tornado hit.

Well, Alana got mad and wrote all over her walls with green marker. She also drew a frowny-face on her carpet. Yeah, Bruce was seriously peeved!

So, he takes away her canopy (it was getting in the way of cleaning the carpets), and Alana is having herself a mighty fit about putting on her shoes and socks and getting ready to take the older kids to their activities at church. Now, Alana's fits are something to behold. She screams and fusses and carries on, hollering things like "I HATE shoes!" or "Socks are STUPID!" or "I HATE YOU!" Since she's our third child, we've gotten rather nonchalant about such things. My usual response is something along the lines of "That's nice. Put them on anyway." or "You don't have to like me....but you still have to do (whatever chore she is trying to avoid)." My favorite is probably when she says "I don't WANT to." My response? "Well, I don't want to listen to a whiney little girl, but we've all got to do things we don't want to do. Put on your shoes." She HATES that!

But I digress........Bruce is threatening to take away her favorite stuffy (currently a seal named "Peachy"). I said she'd have to hand over all of her crayons, markers, pens, pencils, and colored pencils since she didn't seem to know how to use them properly. Bruce said something to the effect of "Yeah, that. That makes more sense." ROFL!

Alana made it very clear that she did NOT want to go with us. Period. She was NOT putting on her coat. She was NOT getting in the van.

Bruce is getting ready to drag her out the door. I said "All right then. Stay here. By yourself. Have a good time." And walked out the door. (one of these days she's going to call that bluff). But, of course, she got very upset at the idea of being left alone and came running out to the van, wailing her head off.

So, we took the kids to church and then went out to dinner. Along the way, Bruce asked Alana why she wrote on the walls and her carpet.

Her response? "Because I was mad at you. I don't WANT to clean my room!" (Picture her darling face with a pouty, defiant look).

Ohhhh.....I see.

Later, at dinner, I'm telling her that, when we get home, I want all of her crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc.

She says, *sigh* "Mom, I never color on the walls with crayon. It's too hard to get off!"

Methinks Magic Erasers and washable markers have made her life a bit too easy!