Who's in charge here?

For the last couple of years, Jane and I have been in hot competition over charge of this house and it's contents. I figure that I'm in charge, seeing as how I gave her life. She's pretty determined that I'm wrong. I am either completely ignored or openly defied by her about once every ten minutes or so and she feels completely justified. Sometimes I just deal with it and move on, but at least once a day we end up yelling at each other, neither of us willing to relinquish our God given right to be in charge. Imagine two wild animals fighting for alpha position except we are both a stubborn as mules and we never get any closer to resolving the issue. If I leave the room for half a second I return to find that she has given Lizzy permission to have an enormous red popsicle and eat it in the front yard by herself then shown her outside and closed and locked the door. I'm so not kidding.

Today, Jane and Lizzy were "painting" outside. "Painting" consists of 2 cheap brushes, a small bucket of water and the patio as a canvas. I stole this idea from another mom's blog and it entertains the kids almost every day. You should try it.

Anyway... This was a bad idea today for a couple of reasons. For one, Lizzy is sick as a dog and shouldn't have been outside and for another, I was upstairs trying to make some barrettes. All of a sudden I heard the all too familiar banshee scream. This time, it was Jane. I ran downstairs to try to prevent her from coming upstairs and waking Charlie.

Turns out that she had fallen and scraped her knees on the bricks and there was a little legitimate blood. The girls REALLY like bandaids, so we have the general rule that unless there is "red liquid pouring from your skin" you don't need one. I carried her and her sobbing self to the couch while I went to fetch the Hello Kitty bandaids that I bought at Target last week. I searched, but they weren't there. All of a sudden I hear Jane pull it together....

"Mom, you aren't looking in the right place. The bandaids are up there, I know it, you aren't looking hard enough."

"Jane, I've taken down the bins and looked through them, they aren't here."

"Bring them here, I'll find them. Nevermind, (sigh) I'll just come over there."

And then I watch her stand up, walk from the couch to the kitchen and climb up on a stool. She insisted that I put the bins of medicine on the counter for her to go through. And with an air of superiority I get...

"They aren't in this one, give me the other one... Hmmmm. Mom, they aren't here. You'd better go find them upstairs. They must be in the bathroom."

Obediently, I go. I return a couple minutes later with a couple generic bandaids that I scrounged up from the bottom of the vanity drawer. She informed me that they will have to suffice and starts to open them. I wanted to put some ointment on the scrapes since they were pretty dirty, so I told her not to move until I get the Neosporin. When I get back, she's trying to bandage her own wounds...

"Jane! I told you not to do that! Let me put some of this cream on them."

"Fine! But this one goes on this knee here and this one goes over here."

"I think that I know how to put on a bandaid, just let me do it."

"That's too much cream! I don't need that much. You're putting it in the wrong spot, it needs to be more over here! We need another bandaid, this spot isn't covered well enough!"

I tried to keep it together, but I don't take very kindly to a four year old treating me as though I'm so incompetent that I can't successfully adhere a bandaid to a knee.

As soon as I finished, the tears began again.

"Mooooooooom! I feel horrible! I neeeeeeeed you to caaaaaaaarry me!"

"Fine, but I'm taking a picture first."



the invalid.