As Tall As I Am

 This morning I gave Bella a hug and it struck me that she felt taller.  "Are you as tall as I am?!?" I asked in shock.  We went over to the wall where we have recorded the kids' height measurements and measured her.  Her height mark came parallel to mine.  The day she'd been waiting for had arrived.  She whooped and cheered and declared, "Let's go get pizza!"  When Benjamin grew to be my height he had asked for a large ice cream as a celebratory treat.  Bella has been saying for months that what she wants is a pizza all to herself.  She and I went to Costco and bought her a 1/2 cheese, 1/2 pepperoni pizza just for her.  She also wanted a churro but they don't sell those during covid, so we also stopped at Wendy's and got her a frosty.  She was thrilled.  I don't know why she loves the fatty food so much, but she really, really does.  Luckily, she didn't eat all that by herself.  We now have a lot of left-over pizza in the fridge that she has carefully labeled with her name and won't let anyone touch.  I guess because she's a middle child, but she is extremely possesive of her things.  She guards her things militantly and very rarely lets anyone borrow anything.  She has had to really learn to stand her ground as a middle child and only girl.  She hates to lose, hates to admit she's wrong, and hates to share.  She will lie, cheat, and steal to get the upper hand, if necessary.  It used to be worse when she was younger.  It's getting better, but she will still never back down in an argument and never admit defeat.  It's going to serve her well as an adult, I'm sure, but it's hard to live with.  In any case, I knew that she'd be so careful about her pizza, so I bought the boys a pizza to eat as well.

                                        

After our pizza lunch, the kids and I went to another cider mill and had fun in the corn maze.  Bella is the navigation champ and got all the clues first, but the rest of us did pretty well.   Plus, considering that I was pushing a stroller the whole time, I did quite well too.  Then the kids wanted donuts, but I insisted that since they'd just porked out on pizza, we should skip that this time.  Plus, I said, we could use that money on go karts if they wanted.  They were all in agreement.  We had ridden them on the last day of summer and so it seemed fitting that we'd ride them again on the last day of online school....at least until someone at school gets Covid and they shut the place down again.