Pumpkins, Corn Maze and Tears

I failed to mention that our neighbors also accompanied us to the pumpkin patch on Saturday. They have daughters aged seven and three. Their eldest daughter has been known to drive me more than a little crazy because she is so different than my own daughter. Her Highness is usually fairly quiet and is content to read Junie B. Jones or play Barbies but when this other child is in the mix, the crazy level and volume reach unknown heights.

It's not like this little girl is bad. She's not. She's silly and ornery; she just occasionally could benefit from some pharmaceuticals. That's all. The pumpkin farm seemed the perfect place to go with a high energy child like Princess W because of the wide open spaces, fresh air and a 5 acre corn maze. Surely she couldn't drive me batty there.

And she didn't. Thank God. She actually fulfilled a role in our group that my own daughter has become so adept at fulfilling. That is the role of the sourpuss. The whiner. The complainer. You know what I am talking about: the child who wears their proverbial heart upon their little sleeves and the slightest bump causes it to tumble to the ground and shatter into a bazillion pieces.

Little things such as her little sister getting to hold the bunny first set her off. She flung her jacket to the ground and stomped off. Another time, she was asked to hold still for a picture and almost exploded into a thousand pieces of anger and tears. Her parents became frustrated. Her father fumed and fussed. Her mother made excuses.

I nodded in agreement that, yes, this is just being seven. Isn't it a difficult age? I shrugged off the behavior to the fretting father, assuring him that it was fine; it happens often at our home. But, inside, I was gloating. Thank God it wasn't my child. No, indeed. My lovely, well-behaved, emotionally stable daughter was playing nicely with the others, her sensitive nature shrouded this day by the excitement of pumpkins and a corn maze.

On that day, my kid kept her emotions in check. She was not the one embarrassing me and appearing as a pampered, coddled, spoiled little brat (which, sigh, she kinda is). Those moments made me so glad that we went to the farm with the other family because someone had to be the crybaby and, for once, my kid was off duty.