On life with a 5 year old child demon

Don’t get me wrong; Samantha is great. She’s absolutely adorable and cute, playful and creative, loving and sweet but she’s also very energetic which, while not necessarily bad, can be exhausting when she clings to you incessantly.

She’s also a little girl which means she doesn’t quite yet completely grasp the concepts of right/wrong, responsibility and sharing. She’ll often demand that I share something with her but really mean I give it up and she doesn’t like to share much herself, of course. I forgive her but sometimes you just can’t reason with a little girl who thinks mostly about herself.

It’s hard when she’s naughty or really pushing it and you have to scold her because she becomes so hurt and whiny. She hasn’t thrown any big tantrums, really but she’ll tart crying (or faking it) and crawl under a table or some similar object and sing a little song about how no one loves her. It’s rather cute and amusing but still exasperating.

I love her, I do but I need time to myself and to spend with my friends. Every time I leave, it’s a big to-do with her usually crying, clinging to my leg and, like last night, asking for 50,000 hugs before I leave. I feel so bad because I don’t want to hurt her feelings but there’s so many people I’m trying to see before I leave. Even though Samantha really does like Wendy, she is always mad at her because Wendy takes me away. )=

And for some reason, she is as hungry as a teenage boy (and her tummy shows it) and often satisfies these cravings with the strangest foods – hot dogs in taco shells, “cheese tacos” (cheese on half a taco shell), butter sandwiches so on and so forth. From what I gather, she’s a pretty picky eater (ha, like me!) and prefers chicken (also like me!) and happy meals too often (not so much like me). She’s not eating anything too healthy and I hope mom and Tim crack down on that but she doesn’t always like to listen.

She is awfully cute, though. She tells me she doesn’t speak my language when I correct her English and she seems to run to me to defend her from others (like Mom). She loves and only wears pink because I like it which is the same reason she’s obsessed with Scooby Doo; although even I am sick of it now. She has such a cute little face when she wants something and she uses many expressions which I try to get in picture but sometimes she likes to play the “I won’t let you take a picture” game which is usually remedied by asking her to take a picture with Floppy (big Floppy to her) whom she loves and I don’t think she will let me have in the future.

Luckily, I have a few hours every day when she’s at school to get some things done. Her spring break lasted for about a week and a half and it was too much for me! I will miss her immensely when I leave and I wonder how she’ll take it but it’s been so an exhausting few weeks here and I miss Ryan terribly so I am ready to go. I’m also looking forward to a good night’s sleep as Samantha isn’t the easiest person to share a bed (or even worse – a couch!) with and she wakes you up when she’s awake by saying “I think I can’t sleep anymore.” Ha!