Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Decisions, decisions

My mother-in-law recently told me how much she loves it when her good character traits manifest themselves in her children. It makes her so proud. She also confessed, though, that she cringes when she sees the bad ones--magnified.

Me, too. Although, this one is all on Luke.

Emmeline's school had a book fair today. Remember those?! My favorite time of the school year! So, being the good mother that I am, I matched the money that EmJ was willing to spend and told her she could pick out whatever she wanted.

WRONG!!!

(Note to self: Next time, pre-order.)

She got in the car after school today, and I asked her to show me what she got. She shrugged and said, "Mrs. ***** is going to help me find something tomorrow." I took one long look at her bloodshot eyes for the translation. "I had a melt down because there were, like, thirty-hundred-thousand books and I wanted them all, but I didn't want to part with all the money, so I tried to choose just one, but there were so many good ones that I just walked around with a pile of books and I tried to do the math in my head to see what I could get, but I don't know if $3.99 is three dollars or four dollars because you totally confused me yesterday, and I didn't want to settle for just one book if I actually had enough money for two, but even if I could get two I couldn't decide between the Fancy Nancy book, the Encyclopedia of Cats, or this really stupid calendar with pictures of Seattle on it, and then Mrs. ***** said, 'Five more minutes,' so I had to put all the books back and go to lunch and I was so distraught that I couldn't eat, and so my teacher said we could go back tomorrow and she will help be choose a book, which made me cry again because now I will be thinking about it all night long." (Breathe, EmJ, breathe.)

"Decisions are the worst."

4 comments:

Kelly said...

such a cute story!

Let us knwo what she finally decides on!

Anonymous said...

Leena would soooo do the SAME thing! (she melts down ovewr the dumbest things)

I guess it's a little girl thing?

Melissa said...

boy, she and Eli must be related!

Anonymous said...

Oh poor girl... I almost teared up, just knowing what a dilemma that is for a 1st grader! You'll have to let us know what she actually picked out!