Hard lessons

Sophia is learning a couple of hard lessons these days, primary among them being that when things break, they often can't be fixed.

She received a nice hairband for christmas, and she wore it a few times and quite liked it. One afternoon, she and Mom were in her room playing, and she picked up the hairband, looked at mom, said "I break it" and proceeded to bend it in half the wrong way. The band cracked and was ruined. She then started to cry, and proceed to have a fit saying "Put it together!" We spent some time comforting her but telling her that it couldn't be put together, that it was broken and had to be thrown away (which was true - there was no fixing this break). She calmed down after a while, but for a while was confused and enraged that the thing that was once whole and is now broken could not be made whole again.

A few days later, we were in the store and she had a coke cup full of water, complete with lid and straw. And yes, we had costco hotdogs for lunch. It's not such a horrible thing once in a while. So we're rolling around the store and suddenly there's a sloshing noise and the new bathing suit in the cart is soaked with water and there is a large and spreading puddle on the floor. She had up-ended the cup, just to see what would happen, and the lid popped off and out flowed all of the water. She held the cup to me and said she wanted more. I tried to explain to her that refills weren't free (although water would probably have been OK but we were not anywhere near the cafeteria) but she wouldn't have it. She threw a fit, again confused and angry that things once emptied cannot on demand be filled.

A tough life lesson but one better learned early than late, I suppose.