Grrrls

Mabel was hell on wheels this morning at playgroup, for no apparent reason. When I asked her why, in the car on the way home (I mean, I asked her in the car, she didn't do it in the car; and yes, for your information, it is much easier for me to just keep typing than to back up with the delete button to clarify things), she had felt the need to fight with her friend and push over her friend's little brother, repeatedly, she told me it was because she hasn't had a nap. Which is fine, except that this was at 9.30am. I need to stop excusing bad behaviour with lack of naps, it would seem.

Now she's napping, and I feel like I need one too. I didn't think last night was particularly bad, but perhaps we were both sleepwalking up and down the corridor for hours and neither one of us remembers.

I think she was just very excited to be there this morning, and wanted to show off to everyone that these are her particular friends whom she sees outside school/ organized playtime events, and she felt the best way to do that was with overenthusiastic belligerent physical contact. Interspersed with taking toys away from smaller children just for the heck of it and/or because they weren't doing it right.

I don't know if this is a girl thing, but it's exactly what Dash's friend (known here as Helen) used to do every time we had a playdate, and here's Mabel being her second incarnation all over again; and it's not as if her first incarnation isn't still out there wreaking havoc - I mean, being sweetness and light and growing up at twice the speed of Dash, it seems whenever we see her - so I'm not sure population of greater Washington DC can deal with the sheer force of another one. Or that I have the fortitude to cope with it.

So is it girls in general, or those two in particular?