The dark side

I happened to come across this post last week about the author's daughter being obsessed with bad news, and immediately thought OH MY GOD THAT WAS ME AS A KID (which I promptly told Gretchen). It's an old joke in our family that when we were in Kindergarten (maybe preschool?) and painted pictures of our houses, I would paint big tornadoes in all of mine. Never mind that San Diego doesn't actually have tornadoes--I saw them on the Wizard of Oz and read about them in books and newspapers, so that was enough (it's a good thing The Weather Channel didn't exist when I was a kid or I might have never left the house).

The scary thing is, Mädchen is already showing signs of having the same type of personality. When we were at PetSmart the other night, there was a family buying a hamster, and when the employee went to put it in a box, the hamster started going ballistic and trying to bite his fingers. I made an offhand comment that the hamster was unhappy, and for the next hour all Mädchen could talk about was that hamster. "Why he unhappy? What the matter? Hamster not happy." We tried to explain that the hamster was going to be very happy when he got to his new home, but the damage was done. We've realized we have to be extremely careful about expressing any sort of dismay within earshot because she gets so sensitive about things. I may give Gretchen a hard time about how Mädchen talks nonstop (which she clearly inherited from Gretchen), but it looks like I may have given her some of my neuroses as well. Lucky Mädchen!