Precocious, Personified

If you look up the word Precocious in the dictionary, you will arrive at a 2-page spread with this face grinning out at you:


This is my beautiful niece, Isabella. She is five ("Five-and-a-half!"), just started Kindergarten, and I have no doubt is schooling her so-called-teachers on anything that happens to come up - you know - reading, writing, coloring... She is smart. She never shuts up, and the things that come out of her mouth keep us in hysterics and shaking our heads. ("DON'T LAUGH AT ME!") For example:

Yesterday, in the car...

"Once, when I was three, I had a disease."
"What?"
"Once, when I was three, I had a disease."

Mac looked at me, laughing, and said, "That's what I thought she said."

Me: "You had a disease?"
"Yes, and it made my feet crinkly and my hands crinkly and my body crinkly."
"Ok." (If you say so...)

And later...

"When I was at Wago & Papa's when you were gone, me and my mom rode the scooters all the way to Indiananakolis. And to China."
"You did?! And you didn't run out of browdy*? (*The way she used to pronounce 'battery.')
"AUNTIE. It's BROWWWWNIE."

Which made Mac and I lose it.

And really pissed her off.

Then I had to apologize.

She is sassy and she makes stuff up. She is certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she is right and will argue until most people say, "Fine", and walk away defeated. But not me. I will argue with this 5-year-old. Behold:

(While driving through a newer section of my parent's neighborhood last night.)

Bella: "This is my neighborhood."
Me: "No, baby. This is Wago & Papa's neighborhood."
"No, this is my neighborhood."
"No, Honey, your house is about 3 miles away. This is near Wago & Papa's house."
"No it isn't."
"Yes it is."
"No it isn't."
"Bella, I am older than you and I know where we are. Your neighborhood is nowhere near here."
"Yes it is."

While realizing all the while, how absurd it is that I'm arguing with a sassy-pants kindergartner, now I'm starting to get pissed:

"Now you're just being sassy."
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are."
"No I'm not."
"One more word and you're taking a timeout when we get back to Wago & Papa's house."

And in a classic reverse-move, she changed her attitude and the subject and became all sunshine and roses, a little Shirley Temple.

I don't for a second think that she truly thought we were in her neighborhood. I think she just likes to argue and likes to win. What she doesn't know is that I like to win too and I'm bigger, I am smarter; I have the ability to make any chair a Time-Out Chair, and have the Parental Coup-de-Gras, the "Because I Said So" Rule to trump any BS she tries to fling my way.