And let me reiterate: it's a gooood thing we went out to eat, so that Madeleine could show off her table manners and etiquette by eating buttered pasta with her hands:
Needless to say, the girls were a bit over-tired the following day, and it turned out to be a busy day for both. Madeleine had preschool in the morning, much to her relief. ("But Mama? I feel SCARED to go to kindergarten," she lamented on her birthday, assuming that now that she's five she will automatically be kicked out of preschool and forced into elementary school.) The rest of Madeleine's day entailed running lots of boring errands with her Mom and Dad, as we readied things further for our upcoming move.
One of our outings was to the UPS store to get condo paperwork notarized, which apparently threw Madeleine for a loop. She knew that Julia was going to a friend's house after school, however, my statement of "Come on, honey, we have to run an errand with Daddy," seemed to be interpreted as "Come on, honey, we're going to pick up Julia." As we got out of our car to walk towards the UPS store entrance, Madeleine was confused.
MADELEINE: Wait. Mama. WHERE are we going?
ME: We're going to the UPS store.
MADELEINE: Oh! Mama! I've never BEEN there. (silence) Wait. Mama. You mean the girls are PLAYING at the UPS store!??
With the program as always.
While Ethan and I waited for the notary to peruse our paperwork, Madeleine helpfully held onto the package of bubble wrap I was planning to buy. I'm sure nobody was annoyed by the fact that, in swinging her arm back and forth excitedly, she accidentally let the bubble wrap package fly, sailing over the sale counter, knocking a cash register monitor off kilter. Never a dull moment.
I guess the trip to the store got Madeleine into an existential mood, because as we pulled back into our driveway afterwards, she had a very important request.
MADELEINE: Mama? When we get inside, can you look at the calendar to figure out how many days we've been here?
ME: What do you mean? How many days we've been where?
MADELEINE: Uh...how many days...uh...
ME: How many days you've been alive?
MADELEINE: Uh, yes!
Thankfully, I didn't need a calendar to figure that out, seeing as I already knew she was five years and one day old. Multiply five by 365, add a day, add another day for a Leap Year, and voila! The answer to Madeleine's existence.
Madeleine had to come back in the car with me a bit later to pick Julia up from her play-date, and it seems a late-night bedtime, a full day of school, and a play-date was a bit too much for our overtired seven-year-old. She was nothing but a ball of crankiness as we drove home. I got to hear all kinds of accusations about my sub-par parenting, like this one:
JULIA: How come everybody ELSE gets so many special things, and I didn't get to do ANYTHING special today EXCEPT have a PLAY-DATE?
Luckily, Madeleine, being a newly wizened five-year-old, had some practical advice for Julia.
MADELEINE: (authoritatively) Julia. Try and act like a SEVEN-YEAR-OLD.
Uh-oh. *Definitely* the WRONG thing to say to an already crabby Julia.
JULIA: Madeleine. I'm NOT seven. I'm NOT seven and I'm NOT eight.
Yeah. And this is not a living room.
Sigh. Let's home we can all catch up on some sleep this weekend.
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