Wild girl

Here's a little story about Paige that says a lot about who she is these days.

Today my mom, the kids, and I were at Michael's (the craft store) looking for new ways to spend money on stuff I didn't know I needed, and Paige was being rather...er...horrible. Lately she becomes outraged at the idea of riding in a shopping cart or a stroller, and she's very vocal about her displeasure. Once wrestled into the cart, she squirms out of the seat buckle and tries over and over to stand up, giving her poor mother visions of bloody chins and cracked teeth. Also, it's really annoying.

Lately my solution is to force her to stay in the cart until I'm 75% finished shopping; then I let her "walk," which usually ends up as running with me chasing behind her, frantically reshelving the items she's pulled down and smiling apologetically at other shoppers.

When my mom is with me, she and I can work like sheepdogs and maintain some semblance of control over Paige as she tears through the store. Sometimes my mom is even willing to do all of the chasing (though I think she secretly disapproves of my letting Paige out of the cart at all) and let me finish my browsing. Today was that kind of day.

At lunch, she gave me this report of her tour of duty: While chasing Paige up and down the aisles, my mom came upon a woman looking at some lovely Martha Stewart craft paper, a toddler perched demurely on her hip. The little girl had sweet blond curls, pinned back neatly with a be-bowed barrette, her hair falling in perfect ringlets on her neck. She was dressed in a crisp smocked sundress and little white sandals and was looking innocently, patiently around the store, giving little waves to passersby while her mother shopped.

Just as my mother noticed this woman and her darling daughter and had registered the scene, she looked up to see Paige at the other end of the aisle, bangs hanging in her eyes, barrette torn from her head and tossed on the floor of the knitting aisle, mouth green and sticky from my attempt at a lollipop bribe, one shoe on her foot, one in her hand, running toward my mother and hollering gleefully. "Like a wild girl come from the jungle" my mother said. She looked from the well-coiffed mother and child to her vagabond granddaughter, now hanging on her knees, wiping lollipop goo on her linen pants.

"Honey," she told me at the end of her story, "I wouldn't want it any other way."

Me neither.