What's our girl up to?

Okay, I know you all want to hear about Zadie. She's good. Lots of learning, and lots of challenges, as it should be.

I suggested that she might want to learn to play the drums, and she does. We talked a lot about the guitar, and a month later, she remembered the names of all the parts of the guitar. She remembers lyrics to songs, and is not too bad at melodies, either. The other day, we turned on a mix CD that a friend made me a long time ago, and as all the songs came on, she would say "Oh! I like this one!" I wondered if she would remember Proud Mary, which we used to listen to a lot, and she totally does. I can sing the first part of a line and she can finish it.

She loves books, and she is content to have me read poetry to her almost endlessly. She is recognizing some words, although learning to read isn't a matter of urgency to her. She recognizes all the letters and can make most of them in a pretty recognizable fashion. I spelled out her name for her the other day, and she wrote all the letters, although not all in the typical order. She does, however, seem to know that you write from left to write mostly, and she pretends to write notes regularly.

Physically, she has gained dexterity in the most unbelievable ways. She just brought home a bracelet, and of course she strung all 34 beads onto the pipe cleaner. I watched her at the park on Sunday, the park we've been going to for years, and suddenly she can shinny up the steep steps, trot across the balance beam (the same balance beam that I used to have to walk with her, letting her clutch my index fingers!), and hop onto the digger. She's graceful, easy, strong, fast... She amazes me.

And, as she has continued to be strong-willed, creative, and logical, life with her is sometimes very hard. She does a lot of limit-testing, probably more than most kids, but less than the kids on SuperNanny. Sometimes she can be perfectly pleasant and sweet and loving, and other times she can be a screaming maniac, and then worst, she can be nonchalantly bitchy. One of her recent refrains is "No. I won't do anything for you." This is delivered in a perfectly aloof tone with her eyebrows raised and looking off into the distance past you.

Tonight, for example, she was delaying bedtime -- nothing new. She ran off a couple times, refused to go to the bathroom, so I got serious. I said fine, she didn't have to go potty, I would just put her nighttime diaper on. And she flipped. She yelled, she kicked, she said "go away" (which is about the worst curse she knows). I asked her several times to tell me what was wrong, and she warbled incoherently. She tried to run from the room. Finally, FINALLY, we got her to tell us what was wrong: she had to go potty.

While she sat there, I told her a story about two sisters. One wanted to hold hands, but she didn't tell her older sister, so the older sister never took her hand. She got madder and madder and used mean words until finally she said what she wanted. Then, of course, the older sister was happy to hold hands.

Zadie calmed down a lot and listened. Then she wanted to pretend to be the sisters, so we did. She apologized for not saying what she wanted, and I told her I felt a lot better, and I loved her. She loves me, too.

We've also had to ask her to say "final answer" when she makes a decision, because she has a tendency to say she wants one thing, then we give it to her, and she has a shitfit, complaining that she really wanted the other thing, and we should have known.

I believe that's all normal and part of her strong character. We'll get through it. Actually, the biggest concern I have about her right now is a school thing.

So, if you've spent any time at all with Z, you know that she lives for the company other children and thrives in their presence. So she pretty much walked into the first day of school and found the biggest, cutest girls, and announced "I'm Zadie! I'm a nice girl. Do you want to be friends? I like to play. Can I play with you? Can I sit next to you?" And because the girls have been friends for quite a while, they sort of had their own clique going. Yes; a pre-school clique. Anyway, they rejected her, which meant she tried to insert herself harder, which meant they pushed back harder, and a vicious cycle of whirlwind meanness ensued. Seriously, several of the other mothers have approached either Mom or me and expressed concern over the "girl drama" or "the situation" or just said that they feel bad for Zadie. The teachers know and are trying to intervene. The other parents are watching out. Even the girls' mothers have told the teacher that they're trying really hard to address the situation with their own daughters.

I think it's going to get better, and I think Zadie's learning to cope a little better, too. For example, she has been making friends with another little girl that gets excluded, and sometimes she even just plays with the boys. But it's hard to see those girls be mean to my kid and restrain myself from bitch-slapping them. (NB: I could probably not really bitch-slap a four year old. I am much more likely to say passive-agressive shit loud enough got their mothers to hear. "Oh, those girls don't want to include people right now, honey. Why don't you find someone who's ready to be nice?")

So anyway, that's kind of what's up right now. She loves school, she eats everything in sight, and she pretends to be Wonder Woman and Joan Jett as often as a princess, so I guess we're doing something right.