What Else Can I Say? She's Ornery Onnie

She's been ornery. That's all there is to it. I spent about a half hour looking for my bag tonight. I've gotten in the habit of sitting it on the loft steps when I come in the house. I needed my check book out of it. It wasn't on the steps. I thought, ok, where did I put it? Did I leave it in the car - go check - no. Was it in my room? no. In the den? no. Not in the kitchen, living room, or entry way. No idea. About to give up, I realized SHE'D done something with it (I didn't want to accuse her without knowing for sure but when it wasn't ANYWHERE I figured it was safe to assume and to speculate it's location based on that). So I start thinking - where would she hide this thing? Found it! The tall, narrow steps to the loft are open underneath. It was under the very bottom step, way back in the darkest corner!

Onery Onnie Amnesia

Anna said tonight she wanted to move to a different house. I asked her why. She said so that she could watch tv again. I had to remind her that she's not watching tv, not because it's broken but because she did something naughty and she was being disciplined for it and that when the discipline was over she could watch it again. lol Apparently she forget she had taken a pine cone and scraped her mark into the front of the tv screen. At the time of discipline she informed me that she thought she had her magic invisible pine cone in her hand but it must have really been the real one! 

Onery Onnie...again

There is a reason my daughter has the nickname she does.
I came in from feeding and farm chores last night and sat down for what I thought was going to be a relaxing few minutes. Arianna looks up from the toys she was playing with in the middle of the floor and says, Mama, can I cut my pony's hair. No, baby, I said, because it won't grow back and it's not good to cut the pony's hair. But I think I see where you've already cut some. There was a section of hair hiding behind the box the ponies came out of. She replied Yeah well, just one, but not all of this, some of it just came out all by itself (as she opened the pony box and lifted up two handfuls of horsey hair). Which of course as a mama I can tell that is some story. (Anna already that day had had her tv shows taken from her for scratching our roommate's big screen tv with a pinecone and had her porcelain angel doll taken away for taking it to a place she was told she wasn't allowed to - oh wait and some toys taken away from breaking the mirror off our roommate's model car, and....lol) So I ask her, since she couldn't take care of her things if she would like for me to take them away too and she of course said no. She picked up two glass aquarium stones though and said I could take them away. I don't want to take them away, you haven't done anything bad with them. Which I guess sounded like a dare to her because stared me right in the eyes and gave me a too-perfect-to-come-from-a-5-year-old "oh yeah" face as she lifted them above her head and threw them across the room.
My daughter...is Onery.

The Dreams of a Child

Anna wiggled in her sleep. She always does that when she needs to wake up. It happens once, maybe twice, a night. Like an alarm. Usually I am still awake. Usually it's a signal to me that I need to go to bed now. 

So she woke up and came back to lay beside me. 

I had the tv on  - GAC - a soundtrack to my evening. The climax, the finale...

Dierks Bentley. I Wanna See You Close Your Eyes. 

Anna watched intently (as she always does a tv)

Most of the way through the song, she says: 

Mama, I wanna be that girl. 

So do I, Baby, so do I... 

Ariannese

"Mama, I will just take my money and buy you a new car if you take your money and buy a bike so we can ride bikes together."

My Little Entrepreneur

Anna was approached the other day and was asked to do some work. Her first little paying job: picking up pine cones that have fallen into the yard. The man is the owner of the property I pet sit for. She was so excited to get her first paycheck. Counted it out herself and made immediate plans on how to spend it. She even tried to buy my dinner tonight with it. 

I smile though, recalling our conversation a few hours ago. 

We talked about how for every $10 she gets, she needs to put $1 into the Tithe envelope for the church, $1 into the Save envelope to go to the bank and the rest can go into the Spend envelope for her to do whatever she wants with. 

She looked at me and said, "Mama, can I put $2 in the Save?"

"Yes, Sweetie. And do you want to put $2 in the Tithe too?"

"Yes."

How proud a Mama is when her child makes wise decisions all on her own. 

She did say, too, at the start of the second day of "work" that she didn't want to pick up pine cones. She didn't like it. But she wanted the money so she was going to do it anyway.... lol 

Onery Onnie

*My nickname for Arianna is Ahnie

*We're in the south and I guess it's common to pronounce ornery as onery 

One day, Arianna and I were eating dinner with a few new friends. The dad, having only a boy, was charmed to flood Anna with attention and teasings. He picked up on her personality very quickly and asked her "So are you onery, Ahnie?"

"No, I'm just Ahnie."

"Onery Onnie! Onery Onnie!"

Ah, a new nickname is born...