Missing

I don't want to alarm anyone, but my usually calm mannered angel daughter is missing. In her place is a new little girl, one who likes to YELL, kick, hit her brother and make sarcastic remarks to me. For example: "Abbey, this room is a mess. What are we going to do about it?" Her answer: "Build a new room and not let you in it." What? Totally sarcastic and fresh. Yesterday at Stop & Shop she threw the biggest tantrum of her entire life, splitting the eardrums of everyone in the entire front end of the store with her incessant screaming. This scene was due to the following reasons which I'll admit may have been partly (mostly) my fault. (1) She fell asleep as we entered the grocery store parking lot, forcing me to wake her right up to go in. (2) We shopped at 12:00 and I smartly decided we would eat lunch after . . . yeah I know, not such a swift move. (3) The following words out of my mouth "no, we aren't going to get a balloon today" were filtered through the air and entered her ears sounding like this "yes, you sure can get a balloon. Why don't you scamper over to the florist section all by yourself and pick one out." This resulted in the aforementioned tantrum that garnered us not 1, not 2 but 3 people bagging our groceries in order to get us the hell out of there. An older woman actually drove her car over to me in the parking lot to tell me that I was doing a good job and to congratulate me on not giving in and letting her have a balloon. Yup, we were definitely the spectacle of the day.

So what else is new with the precious 4 1/2 year old Abigail? Well, I think her new name should possibly be toot. When Jack was little I started calling "farts" "toots" and the name stuck. Abbey is by far the gassiest, tootiest child in a 100 mile radius. She blows her brother away in the gas department, literally. She has mastered the art so well and takes such pride in her gas that she will call me into the bathroom while she's in the tub to show me the bubbles she can make in the water. And these aren't spontaneous toots either. She'll yell from the tub "Mommy, come here." I'll answer "yup, in a sec." 4 minutes will go by. "Mommy, come here now." "OK, just one more second." 3 more minutes. "Mommmmmmy, I need you." And I'll saunter in, only to have her say "watch this" and fart in the tub, creating lots of bubbles. Are you kidding me? She held that in for 7 minutes until I came in. What kind of skill does this entail? I'm telling ya, I'm frightened. But this is just a phase, right? I'll get my kind, good natured, well behaving little girl back, right? Right? I will, right?