She does listen!

In typical fashion, I picked up the girls from their respective places after work.  I usually ask at daycare if Little Princess was good and if she pooped. Those are pretty much the main things I need to know about her.  Big Princess  on the other hand is usually tricky.

My main method with her has been to not ask general things like, "How was your day?"  It just leads to the one word answers that drive me crazy.  So, this year my strategy is to start the conversation with, "How are you doing?" The reason for this is so I can gage how much more she will answer for me.  Today, here's our conversation.

Me:  Hey sweetie. Looks like you had a good day with your new shoes.

Big P: Yeah, it was good.

Me:  Did everyone like your shoes?

Big P:  Nah, nobody really cared.

Me:  What was the best part of your day?

Big P:  Probably recess and playing with Kenzie.

Me:  Sounds like you like Kenzie a lot. Are you playing with anyone else?

Big P:  Well, Megan doesn't like me anymore so she ignores me and I decided to just ignore her, too.  It works for us.

Me:  As long as you don't intentionally hurt her feelings, I guess that's a good decision.  Anyone else that you would say are friends and people you don't ignore?

Big P:  There's Ariel. She's fun and she's nice but wow is she crazy sometimes. And then there's Grace. Mom, these are the people who look into my heart instead of looking at how small I am.

Me:  People don't like you because you're small?

Big P:  I don't know if they don't like me, but some won't play with me because they think I'm too small to really be in third grade so they skip over me.  But there are those three who look into my heart and like me so I'm good.

And that, my friends, made Mama's heart soar because we've been working so hard on the importance of having people who see the "inside you" and not just the "outside you."  Plus, we've been trying to make sure we focus on other people's "inside you" instead of judging their outsides, no matter how mad they make Mama when she's driving. Yeah, that's my confession.  I'm a victim of road rage quite often and my poor kids witness my "mouth slips."  But hey, I'm not talking about me tonight....just my Big Princess who sees deeper than many adults.