Breath Taking

Miss F is having a bit of a difficult time at the moment. More specifically, she is having a rather big bit of difficulty accepting that she is not the centre of everyone else's universe, every single bit of the time.
Mary Poppins has named it the "Princess Phase", and even though I am not particularly fond of the whole "Princess" concept, it seems quite an appropriate description for Miss F's present phase.

We have had quite a few princess moments of late...

There was the one where, after being complemented on her puzzle completing cleverness, Miss F replied angrily, "I don't want to be clever - I want to be cute!"

Then there was the one where she went to hit Mary Poppins with a swing because Mary Poppins had the nerve to wear a necklace, and, as Miss F said, "I'm the pretty one, not you!"

This was shortly followed by the very sincere - but not quite in the right way - apology of, "I'm sorry you're not the pretty one."

Just this morning, Miss F was decorating some paper with some stickers of ballerinas. Ballerinas are somewhat of a favourite of hers at the moment. In fact - anything ballet is a winner. Untill she decided that this ballerina was a better dancer than she was. Then the poor thing was a gonner...
"I don't like this ballerina any more. I hate her. I'm going to rip her head off!"
(And yes, her head was indeed, ripped off.)

Tonight though - Tonight we had the most breath taking princess moment to date. So breath taking, in fact, it threatened to be fatal.

Darling, angel, apple of my eye Miss F, decided that she did not want to go to bed at the same time as her sisters. She also decided (some time ago, actually) that anything she does not want to do, she does not have to do. Only she hadn't counted on her mum also having decided that for an over tired four year old, on this particular night, bed time, is bed time. Period.

In an attempt to calm down a quickly escalating tantrum of princess proportions, I asked Miss F to please slow her body down and take a big deep breath, just like a ballerina does.
I was hoping that, having said the magic word (ballet), I might be able to avoid a full blown melt down.

Not going to happen.

With barely a moments pause to consider her response, Miss F yelled, "No, you take a deep breath mummy!!"

Then, after a split second's reconsideration....

"And you're not a ballerina! So STOP BREATHING!"

Yep... Just like I said.

Breath taking.