She's Freaking Me Out

Hardly had I clicked the PUBLISH button on my last post about Elizabeth when she added another charming moment to her history.

Picture me in the grocery store, four kids in tow, all of them squirrely. I parked the cart in front of the centrally located tomatoes, and sent the older ones to get a few veggies while I selected avocados about 10 steps from the cart where Elizabeth and Tallulah were squabbling.

Picture a little sour old lady waiting to get to the tomatoes and finding it impossible with my offspring in her way.

I hurried over and apologized and tried to move the cart. Little sour lady wouldn't back up, and I was pinned in by two other carts as well, so I had to stand there for a little while apologizing and trying to move, while the veggie seekers came running back with their finds, further clogging up a very small area. Little sour lady would not return my attempts at civil, polite conversation; she just seemed utterly annoyed by my children and my cart. This little rendevous lasted long enough to become pretty uncomfortable. Finally I was able to move, she was able to move, and the entire thing would have receeded into the background, except that Elizabeth, who had been watching the proceedings with her highly developed observational skills, started repeating in a quite loud voice: "THAT GIRL IS FREAKING ME OUT! THAT GIRL IS FREAKING ME OUT!" She got to about the fifth repetition of this before I could get around the cart to where she was and shush her good. "THAT GIRL" turned out to be little sour lady, as I had feared, and the only response I got from my daughter to my attempts to fine tune her behavior was: "BUT SHE IS!"

Completely inappopriate behavior, completely rude...and yet...completely honest too. Again, they cry when they are sad, they laugh when they are happy, and they tell you exactly what they do not like, including when people freak them out.