Weekend Recap, anyone?

Friday's drive home was long, but much better than my rainy Sunday afternoon drive down. The sun was shining, the grass was green and I had kickin' awesome tunes to sing my lungs out with. I got to see the lovely Prince-y for an hour at the park before I had to leave him and drive to Spokane to see my lovely aunt and cousin Princess M.

Princess M is the most energetic seven year old I've ever met. She's entertaining and knows what she wants and just how she wants it. And let me tell you, she wants it all and she wants it delivered. But I love her anyway. :-)

I spent the entire weekend with this amazing little girl who, I must confess, drove me absolutely nuts. In a good way. She taught me a lot about parenting. A ton. Like an elephant load. I felt like mommy for the weekend - which was both exciting and a little nerve racking, but also very enjoyable, rewarding and educating.

You see, my lovely little cousin sufferes from only child princess of the world syndrome. She comes from a life where it's 'all about me' and I grew up in really an opposite sort of life - one where I wanted to believe it was all about me, but knowing at the same time that it very much wasn't. And I don't live with Princess M all the time, obviously, so I don't know her basic routines or really how she does a lot of what she does - but I know one thing, and that's that I don't like how she bosses people around. If that's one thing that annoys me, it's her bossiness. I don't take orders from a 7 year old. I barely tolerate orders from 47 and 50 year old parents. Now, I have to listen to some of what Princess says though, simply because it is her house and I don't know how a lot of things go down, but in spite of her bossiness, she is also good at listening.

Saturday we spent with my grandparents who live just across town from the lovely Princess M. We kind of invited ourselves over for lunch, but I LOVE to see my grandparents and visit with them and M just adores her Papa, so they graciously let us invade their home for a few hours. I watched in amazment at how bossy M could be.

"Grandma, clean this up!" M said in reference to a wet countertop she wanted to climb up on.

"Excuse me? We don't talk to Grandma that way. You can clean the counter up yourself," I tell her.

"Okay," she sighs as if greatly inconvenienced. She grabs a papertowel and cleans up the water.

"You can't climb up there M," Grandma warns. M listens. Good girl. :-)

We spent the rest of the afternoon after lunch out in the back yard doing flips. Using my AWESOMELY EPIC past gymnast SKILLS THAT KILL, I flipped and flopped around that backyard like it was nobody's business. And now, today, I am paying the price with sore achey muscles that haven't been used in years. That being said, I am so proud I can still actually DO all that stuff I learned when I was younger. It's like riding a bike kinda - it doesn't really go away :-)

After we got home from the grandparents, Princess M insists on walking to the store for a soy steamer. She doesn't really tell me where the store is, other than it's really close to her house. I'm really hesitant to go because I don't know where we're headed - I'm thinking espresso stand in a parking lot? Princess tries to tell me that I don't have to go because she very well knows the way and has been there plenty of times. I keep asking her if she's really walked to this place before, and she keeps telling me yes. Finally I consent to the escapade and down the street we go.

Princess M tells me that she's walked this way with her mom before. I have a hard time believing this because I know my aunt and I know my cousin. But if in fact it is true that Auntie walked with Princess to this store, then it must be close? Right? Well, we get to the bottom of the hill and around the corner. You can see down the street pretty well, but there is no espresso stand in my line of view.

"Are you sure you know where we're going?" I ask the Princess.

"OF COURSE I do," she states matter-of-factly. "I've been there a hundred, no, a THOUSAND times!"

"If you say so," I say with a half sigh. We get farther down the street, and I'm still not seeing anything. We're starting to approach a busier street that I'm not so thrilled about walking on. So I turn to M again and ask her for the hundreth time if she's really walked to this store because it seems REALLY far away for her seven year old legs to walk.

"I'm sure. It's just up here a little farther. Like FEET away! We don't even have to cross the street!" She assures me. By this time we've already walked pretty far, so even though my head is screaming at me to go back and get the car, the logic says we've got to be almost there, so a car would be pointless really.

So we get up to the busy street, and it turns out there is a path off in the grass and we don't actually have to walk on the street. "This seems really far away from your house," I say to Princess M.

"No, I've walked this way before," she says again. I sigh. What else can I do? She's already dragged me this far. Ha, ha. Well, then she wants to pretend that we are poor. I'm the mommy and she's the kid and we only have enough money for a few groceries. Princess M goes into poor little girl mode and starts talking with a funny accent that somewhat sounds like a bad British impersonation. But it makes me laugh, so I go along with her story.

We get to the store, which is like a half a mile away, and Princess M walks right up to the Starbuck's counter to order her soy steamer. The guy behind the counter is kind of cute and a little flirty, but Princess M does most of the talking. About how we walked to the store. We walked out of the store a few minutes later with a kid's soy steamer and tall vanilla bean frapp. Delish.

Then we make our treck back home and Princess M managaes to spill the contents of her purse on the pine needle laiden path. She gets a little frustrated because she had told me to carry her purse. But the trip was her idea and I figured she could carry her own purse. She's 7 - she can handle it. So I hold her empty soy steamer cup for her as she picks up her silver coins from the ground. We scan the area to make sure we didn't miss any and I hand her back her cup. She has two hands. She's fine.

We get back to her neighborhood and one of her friends is out on the lawn jumping on a trampoline. M wants to play too, so I take her purse and empty cup and head to her house. Huge sigh of relief as I plop my lazy bum down on the couch and rest while my energetic cousin is now someone else's joy for a few minutes.

Not a half hour later does my aunt and uncle and their crew show up for dinner. Talk about amazing timing. So I'm sitting on the couch talking to my aunt about our day so far, and come to find out that Princess M has NEVER walked to the store EVER. They always take the car. What a trickster I have for a cousin. :-) None-the-less, it was good excersize for us. Ha, ha.

Then I had to give the Princess a bath. She played in the tub with her toys for a half hour and then I had to wash her hair. This is an adventure for me, because I only remember having my hair washed by my mother before I had to take over the task and wash my own hair. But it wasn't too hard to figure out.

Princess M had to have her hair combed because she said it would dry faster. So I combed her long blonde curly locks for a few minutes until there were no tangles. Then I told her to put her pajamas on. So she went into her room and I went into the room where I was sleeping because it has a computer and I was chatting with Prince Charming on ebuddy (dot) com. Princess M peeked her head in through the doorway and told me she didn't want to put her pajamas on while her hair was still wet. I was not about to let her run around clad in just her underwear and promptly told her that she needed to put some clothes on. This greatly displeased her and she went off to her room pouting.

I could hear her openly sobbing in her bedroom, so I went to check on her and make sure that she was really only just upset about the pajamas and not physically hurt. Her tear streaked face said it all.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Huge overly dramatic sob.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting the bed ready."

"Put your pajamas on please. I'll let you talk to Prince Charming if you quite crying." Immediate perk up. The pajamas slide on and the tears subside quick as they came.

"How do we talk to Prince Charming on the computer? Can we hear his voice?"

"No, we type to him and he types back." This greatly amused her, sitting on my lap typing to my boyfriend who is just awesome enough to engage in her little girl anticts. He is amazing if he is anything at all. And then Princess wanted to hear his voice, so he called my cell. Princess M could barely contain her giggles. And then I sent her off to bed.

And today's recap will have to wait until tomorrow because this post seems long enough. Anyway, I hope you all had a totally fab weekend. :-)