A little less sugar, a little more spice...

I used to write a blog. And then I didn’t. And now I’m thinking about taking it up again…at least for the next 29 minutes until I get a new life in Candy Crush Saga and can retackle level 52. Don’t scoff; that shit is hard. Chocolate squares start popping up out of nowhere, and my special candies seem to slide wherever the hell they want to.

Since my last post, my 1 year old became a 4 year old (that’s seriously how it felt: 1 then 4), and because he potty trained and started to be way too self-sufficient, we decided to liven things up around here by having a second one. And in the fastest year known to man, marked by a deafening sonic boom when she blew out her birthday candle, she’s now assumed the spot of resident 1 year old.

And now that she’s toddling around (still with the aid of any nearby piece of furniture), I can tell that my children have totally, vastly different personalities. As a baby, my daughter, Molly, followed a lot of the same patterns as my son, Suttie (remember the kid with the weird name). She slept through the night early, gained weight like a show pig, laughed a lot, and favorited her dad (I’m still convinced he hides puffs in his pockets). 

But in the last few months, a new side to her personality has emerged, one that her brother definitively lacked…a bitchy side. Now I know it’s not customary to use the term “bitchy” when describing a sweet, twinkly-eyed baby girl, and I could have used another term like “moody,” “sassy,” “cantankerous,” “spitfire” (my husband’s go-to), but somehow those synonyms don’t quite encompass all of the emotionally-charged, Veruca Salt-like qualities that my girl will sometimes display.

Don’t get me wrong. She’s sweet too. She gives kisses and loves; she adores her brother and our dog; she’s playfully charming, and her laughter is contagious…while she’s happy. But the minute she feels uncomfortable, tired, ignored, unappreciated, bored, unfulfilled, or challenged, the girl lets her bitch flag fly. This is also true if the wind is blowing from the northwest, if the TV volume is set to an odd number, if I gave her seven yogurt melts when she only wanted six, or I wouldn’t let her rip off my eyelids. You know, the big stuff.

My boy rarely did this. The only reason I don’t say “never” is because I frown on absolutes. He was calm, laid back, easy, and when he got upset, it was over some perceived injustice or out of frustration. He had reasons; his anger had purpose.

But my girl… her inner monologue is something like this:

“Oh, you helped me up, and I didn’t want to be helped up; you just earned yourself a slap in the face.”

“Are those Hello Kitty pajamas? Woman, you know I wear Disney princesses on Thursdays. Now I’m gonna pinch this mole off your arm and cry because you made me do it.”

“Suttie, you’re cool, but I don’t like the look of that Angry Bird structure you just built. It’s too Spanish colonial, and I was looking for something more Romanesque. I’m gonna have to knock it down and throw the pieces violently across the room.”

But even in the face of such…strong will, I’m not concerned. My husband and I are pretty old school when it comes to parenting – we don’t spare the rod, so to speak, we make our behavioral expectations known and they’re enforced, we give both love and tough love – you know, all that discipline jazz. So I’m confident that we’ll be able to teach her, sometimes forcefully, what it means to do right.

But I don’t want to totally stifle the more fiery parts of her personality either. I want to find that fine line that leads from ornery to driven, from selfish to self-assured. And, at the risk of turning this into a feminist rant, I’m glad that, of my two kids, my girl got the gall. I know that, even twenty years from now, she’ll have to fight more for what she wants than her brother will. She’ll have to kick more ass and take more names. She’ll have to be a little bitchy. And if you’ve ever seen her make her wishes boldly known, then you are as certain as I am that the world will not run over her. And, for that, I’m thankful.