i spoke too soon.

It's courting disaster to not worry about your kids. You'd think I'd know that by now.

I was all "Charlotte is social and sweet-tempered and preschool will be a breeze." I've had to have little "talks" with the head teacher every class. First, Cha decided after snack that she wanted to go home and she screamed for half an hour. The next class, they had a circle time and were singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and little miss had a bit of a fit because she didn't want to sing that particular song. Today, I had to go and manhandle her to get inside from the play yard. Miss Pauline had told her several times it was time to come inside and ChaCha simply refused. (She said, "I want to be alone!" to me and I said, "You're not Greta Garbo and I'm your mom and you're going inside now.")

I seem to blank on the fact that my youngest is not only sweet and gregarious, but strong-willed. She is also very charismatic and charming and is trying to use her smile and looking up from under her lashes to get her way. Manipulator, thy name is ChaCha! At our first talk, Miss Pauline said, "Charlotte is completely different from her sisters." I tried to play up the positive of that, but she is. She seems to expect things to go her way and is not shy about demanding things she wants. Oy.

Archie and I were talking about this last night, and he said something very funny. "Charlotte may just be our Rooster." If you are familiar with David Sedaris, you know exactly what Archie was saying.

(And if you aren't familiar with Sedaris, Rooster is the nickname of his youngest brother who is kind of the oddball in the family, but the oddball with a good heart. While I have no plans to allow Cha to swear and do drugs in the house, she is spoiled rotten by her sisters and this seems to tip all the control away from us, as parents. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before she institutes a bucket of candy.)