Girls in the mist

A funny thing happened the day of the Rose Parade, and for the life of me, I can’t explain it at all.Anna was in full on “ME ME ME!” mode as she was coming off of a week of craziness at school and the day at Cedar Point, followed by very little sleep.  Sunday morning found her to be very bossy and pushy, ordering poor Eli around like a drone and snapping demands at us like she was in charge. Her Mom and her sister showed up for the parade viewing party and Eli got a break from the entire bossy older sister stuff. Kara was carted around, ordered to sit and read a book, and so on. As we moved outside to get ready to watch the parade a distinct shift took place in the pecking order. The granddaughter of our day care provider showed up with her family and grandparents to watch the parade. This girl is older than Anna, and spent time with Anna at day care over the years. We all knew who was in charge at day care, and it wasn’t the adult.

Hanging out at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids.

As this child began to interact with Anna, Kara and Eli were tossed aside like dirty tissues and Anna became the minion of the new kid. Requests were presented to us prefaced with “SHE wants to…” or “SHE said we should…” and so on. I’m not sure if a prison rec yard or gorilla behavior studies are more germane to understanding this behavior, but apparently Anna knew her place in the great circle of life when this seasoned Silverback showed up and took control. This kid will be at the daycare for the next few weeks (before our day care lady heads off to become a Carny again for the summer, no, really.) So it will be interesting to see how her submissive behavior around this kid translates at home.

Dian Fossey, yes, gorillas are fabulous creatures, but I wish you would have spent some time studying a little further up the evolutionary chain. For the life of me, I have yet to understand the machinations of the little girl brain.