The Girl Who Cried “Mine!”

Nina has finally started using the word “mine,” and it’s accompanied by tantrums I never envisioned in my worst parenting scenarios.  Most of this weekend it was tolerable, even humorous – drunk with power, she started wielding the word so frequently that she’d say it without any actual material object in mind, then look around flummoxed until she zeroed in on something to stake her claim.  A remote control, stuffed animal, caterpillar – everything was fair game.  What I didn’t anticipate was that she would use  it while helping me in the garden.  I was transplanting a couple dozen heirloom tomato and pepper plants and thought she might enjoy helping me dig around in the dirt.  Unfortunately, Ninazilla had plans of her own – after I got a row planted, she would stomp over to the poor plants, screech “MINE!!” at the top of her lungs, and then pull them out of the ground.

I finally gave up and decided to go inside and do some baking.  In the middle of the afternoon.  When it was over 90 degrees outside.  The heat doesn’t bother me, but I don’t live by myself.  Poor Mario – between preheating the oven and baking two boules, I had the oven going at almost 500 degrees for several hours.  Nina must take after me, though…the heat didn’t slow her down one bit.  Damn.  The bread turned out quite well, though.

Nina also extended her dominion to include the strawberries I picked up at the market.  She would bite into them one by one, screwing her face up in disgust when she bit into a seed, throw the berry down, and then exclaim “mine!” as she reached for another.  So, the strawberries became strawberry mini muffins, which we knew she would actually eat (another favorite word is CAKE).  But even the muffins didn’t escape her territorial clutches; she would sneak into the kitchen, and one by one throughout the afternoon, she bit just the tops off of all the muffins.  When we asked her about it later, she just smiled and said, “mine!”  This is going to be a long summer.