Some days she's my hero

I recently discovered one of the reasons that some days I LOVE my daughter and other days would like her to GO AWAY for a while.

It is her high levels of passion.

She goes from one extreme to the other, there is no middle ground. Nothing is OK, or fine, or kind of fun.

Either I am the meanest mom that has ever lived because I told her to unload the dishwasher; or the greatest mom ever because I authorized them to watch an episode of Speed Racer.

Go to the park- "This is the best day of my life!"

Clean up the pile of her own clothes on the floor -"Oh! I hate that! I am NOT cleaning that up!" ( Oh  yes you are ma'am.")

She has many, many moments of  "Ohhh, this is SO boring." They are so quickly followed by "I LOVE this game!"

Sometimes her moods are hard to follow. When she is angry though, the whole house is WELL aware.

She is crazy and rather hard to live with at some moments but she really is my hero sometimes. Here are some examples of things she has done lately that I am proud of.

- She is not easily intimidated. While at a party recently, I watched her get rather riled up. There was a boy (not a small boy mind you) of 11 years who was on a tricycle. He had been on for a while and she wanted a turn. ( I was far away and watched this from a distance. Mind you I do not encourage her to fight, she does that one all on her own. I also didn't see the lead up to the situation.) He was unwilling to hand it over. He didn't have to, that didn't bother me. The thing that I was amused by in this situation was that he is more than 3 times her size and she was in his face. "You are acting like someone who is MEAN!" Intimidation is not something that she is familiar with. Did she win that one? No. I was just amused that she was so willing to take him on. If she thinks she is right she will fight to the end.

- She has incredible drive. We also went skating recently. She is not good at it A. because we don't go that often and B. they don't make roller blades her size.( Yes they make skates that small, but she trips over them.) She fell down again, and again, and again, and again. Yet, all she would say to me was " I am getting really good at this huh mom?" There were lots of breaks for the water fountain, but never to sit down. A full hour and a half of skating in circles falling down over and over. Getting back up over and over. I was impressed at how quickly she just gets back up and keeps moving. She is indeed improving, but only because of the effort she puts forth.

-While one one of our "Most fun day of my life!" days ( which later involved a car collision ) she was given the opportunity to climb an indoor rock wall. She was THRILLED. (And technically too light, but they overlooked that.) She made it maybe a third of the way on her first try. I was kind of surprised, this child climbs everything. Later she invited me to climb with her. So up we went. Every time I hear rock climbing I think "Wow that would be so fun!" And then when I am physically in the air suddenly I think "Wow! this is completely terrifying." I climbed for a while and kind of gave up. She just kept on moving and encouraging me. She kept me motivated. I climbed much higher because of her than I would have on my own. Then the moment came to let go of the wall and come down. More terror, 20 ft in the air terror. She simply let go and repelled down. Watching her helped me have the faith to just let go. I only relaxed and let go because of her example.

I am so glad to have her in my family. She can be a bit extreme some days. But some days she is extreme in ways I wouldn't want to part with.