3/26/03
Alex has developed a habit of questioning everything I tell her.
This morning she was lying in our bed waiting for us to go downstairs and get some juice. You should know that juice signifies the official start of Allie's day. It's just that important.
Anyway, she's lying in bed and I'm sitting on the edge of the bed putting my shoes on. "I'm going to Jessica's," she says (Jessica is Allie's daycare provider).
I look at her and tell her, "No. Sweetie today you're going to work in the mines."
"Huh?"
"You're going to dig for coal in the mines," I told her.
Alex yelled at Debbie, who was in the bathroom, "Mommy! Am I going to work in the mines?" Debbie answers Allie by saying, "No. Your Daddy's being silly."
Allie looks back at me and narrows her eyes. "I'm going to Jessica's."
"Honey, you have to go and shovel coal today and earn enough money to feed yourself. Mommy and Daddy can't do it anymore. Plus there are things like soap and shampoo. That stuff's expensive. Like socks. Socks cost a lot of money."
"But I don't know how to work at the mine," Allie said.
About this time Deb is coming out of the bathroom and can hear our conversation. That's when I decided to push further, for Deb's benefit and said, "Allie, the men at the mine will show you how. You remember how we shoveled snow out of the driveway? It's a lot like that."
Deb decides that she needs to intervene and tells Allie to get out of bed and follow her downstairs for juice.
But I'm not finished. "They're going to love you down at the mine. You'll fit in all sorts of places the other workers can't go," I said. But I didn't get the response I'd hoped for. In fact, they both stopped talking to me and starting talking about juice. You'd think Allie would be concerned about being forced to toil in the coal dust, but she's more concerned about her juice. Like I said, it's just that important.
I wasn't too discouraged. After all, this was just one example of Allie constantly questioning every word that comes out of my mouth. Like when I told her that if she wasn't nice to the cat I was going to train Pig (our cat) to eat all of her toys. "Mom, is Dad going to feed my toys to Pig?"
Or when I said that if she kept pushing her chair back from the dinner table with her feet she would fall over, hit her head, go see Dr. Tom (her pediatrician) and then we'd have to bury her. "Mommy, is Daddy going to bury me?"
It's as if she doesn't believe a word I say.
"Mom, do I have to ride home on the roof of the car?"
"Mommy, do I have to ride in the trunk?"
"Mommy, is this rat meat?"
"Mama, is Santa locked in the basement?"
"Mommy, did the slides at the park blow up?"
If you're reading this on Thursday, Allie will have asked her mother for confirmation of something I've told her 147 times since Wednesday. And regardless of the fact that most of what I tell her really isn't true, I'm starting to get a complex.