Rebel Yell

It is not news to anyone who knows Lucia that she has a bit of a rebellious streak. She has been this way basically since her first few months of life, and I don't expect that it will change anytime soon. This school year has been a bit hard for her, as she is trying to cope with the concept of pre-school without Colin, her "best friend". We started the school year with sobbing every day, which broke my heart. Well, she has moved on from this stage. Now, she has decided that the best way to deal with the problem of pre-school is to rebel against it. Each day we arrive at school and check the activities board to see what she will be doing that day, and then check the menu board to see what is for lunch. And every day, she decides that she is either not going to do the activity for the day, or not eat what is offered up for lunch. to which I invariably respond, "That's fine, Lucia. You don't have to color the caterpillar drawing today." Or, "That's fine, Lucia. If you don't want to eat anything at all for lunch, you don't have to". But that is not quite good enough. She insists that I also tell her teacher that she is not going to go on the walk in the forest today, or eat pasta with tomato sauce today, and so every morning we have to go to her teacher and say, "Today Lucia doesn't want to learn a new song about fall, or she wants plain pasta instead of pasta with pesto." EVERY DAY. Every single morning, there is something she doesn't want to do or eat, and every morning I have to inform her teacher that this is the case. Of course at the end of the day, the teachers always tell me that she was perfectly happy all day long, participated in the activities and ate her lunch, but apparently she just needs to establish some ground rules before the day begins. I'm told that this kind of rebellion is normal, nothing to worry about. But then again, these so-called experts will not have to deal with Lucia as a fifteen year old.

Here is Lucia's school photo for the year. I have no idea how the photographer managed to capture her inner troublemaker so perfectly.