If you looked up "chutzpah" in the dictionary, this picture would be next to it

In case you don't know, this is Elaine. She's wearing her famous "Catty" shirt, which I bought at the sale last fall, natch. Every morning when she wakes up, she demands, "I want to get dressed now. I want my Catty shirt and jeans." Catty shirt gets washed a lot just because I don't want the hassle of breaking it to her that she can't wear it today. However, Catty is getting too small (because of the three breakfasts a day she eats, more on that later), so if anyone sees any shirts out there with a cat on them (particularly a cute, fancy cat) let me know asap.

The other day when we were riding in the car, I looked back at Elaine's smiling, dimpled face and said, "I just love her. It's like God put a little sunshine in a bottle and gave it to us."

"Yeah," said Darren, "with some lightning bolts thrown in there too."

She has a love-hate relationship with the many ladybugs in our house. The other morning she walked into the bathroom in her pajamas. "My pants fell down," she announced. They looked fine to me so I asked, "Why did your pants fall down?"

"Well, there was a ladybug on them, so that was dangerous for me," she replied.

I'm trying--with little success--to get the girls to hang up their coats as soon as they come in the house. When Elaine comes in, she takes off her pink strawberry raincoat, hands it to me and says, "It's your turn, Mom. I did it last time."

Excuse me?

As I mentioned, she still eats her three breakfasts a day. She eats a breakfast bar with Lucy before we drop Lucy at school. Then she comes home and has a bowl of cereal. Then a little later, she has some yogurt or fruit. Once we were eating breakfast with our friends, Sarah and Lucho. Lucho is a family doctor not to mention they have three children of their own, so he sees a lot of kids.

"She's a good eater, isn't she?" he asked, as Elaine sat across from him, eating her cereal.

"Yes, and that's her third bowl," I answered. His eyes popped. "She ate three bowls of cereal? And she's still so small?"

We told him she needs extra energy for the planning and execution of all her evil deeds.

With her love for cereal, you can imagine she was in heaven the day the naughty leprechaun left Lucky Charms. We buy only the healthy kind of cereal, so sweetened cereal with marshmallows to boot was unheard of. She enjoyed every mouthful

That afternoon, after a lunch of cheese, wheat crackers, carrots, and sliced cucumbers, we three girls went for a walk/bike ride around the block. Elaine pedalled alongside me on her tricycle.

"I want some of that marshmallow cereal when we get home," she said.

"No, that was only a special treat. Besides, you just ate lunch," I told her.

She immediately began to cry. Then to wail. "But I'm starving!" she moaned piteously. We live fairly near a hospital, and the sound of an ambulance passing by is pretty usual. But she had one of those sirens beat. A man walking the opposite way passed us.

"I can't tell, is she happy or sad?" he asked.

"Oh, she's mad!" I said airily and kept moving.

We finally reached our own driveway with her still wailing that I was starving her, her shoulders heaving with sobs. As we turned toward our patio, I happened to look near the little picnic table where the girls had eaten their lunch. In the shrubbery next to it, I saw something orange. Since everything around here is still just brown, I moved in for a closer look.

The orange stuff was squares of cheese. And scattered around it were more remnants of that child's lunch. So...let me get this straight. She threw her lunch in the bushes and then tried to scam Lucky Charms from me.

At least this time, after much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth about not getting marshmallow cereal, she eventually apologized. "I'm sorry I frew my lunch in the bushes, Mom." Usually when she gets in trouble, she bounces right up to our face and says, "Dat is so naughty dat you're shouting at me."

Each day with that little girl you sort of feel like you haven't quite gotten to fasten your seatbelt yet, but the roller coaster has already started. I get the fact that kids are an up-and-down enterprise; it's not easy. And then there's that old saying, "Into each life, a little rain must fall." I understand that.

Nobody said anything about lightning though.