My dear oppositional one

That's right, folks. Ella has learned that she has the ability to be oppositional. It was a sad day in my life but a freeing day in hers. Sometimes she's oppositional just for the sake of being oppositional--I should get used to this for the teenage years, right? When we were driving home from the graduation on Sunday, Aron and I told Ella that we were proud of her for being such a good girl at Annie's graduation. We told her that she was very good and that she did a good job behaving. She told us, "No, Ella not good girl. Ella naughty." We tried to tell her again that she was indeed a good girl and that she deserved to be told this because she was really good. She replied with "Nope. Ella naughty" then she crossed her arms. I'm not sure even where she's heard the word naughty because we've never used it to describe her. Who knows?

She's also started telling us that everything is not fair. If you ask her to pick up a toy, she says "Not fair, Mommy, not fair" then crosses her arms. Again with being oppositional, I asked her if she wanted a cookie. She told me "Not fair, Mommy, not fair." I'm not sure what's not fair about asking her if she wanted a cookie but whatever. She went potty and I asked her to flush and she told me "Not fair, Mommy, not fair." I informed her that it wasn't fair to Mommy to make her flush Ella's peeps so she needed to do it. Sigh. I think she learned this "It's not fair" business from a Clifford the Big Red Dog episode. They had an episode a couple weeks ago about playing fair and one of the characters crossed his arms after he said something wasn't fair. I may have to cut her off from Clifford. Who knew that cartoon could be a bad influence in my house? Double sigh.