The trauma of childhood

So last summer, Dale, Jeff's dad, bought an enormous wooden playset for our kids.  The Trading Post it's called.  It's huge.  If anything catastrphic happens to our house, we could, all six of us, live in it.  It's a thing of beauty.  However, we already had a Little Tykes playset that our friends had given us several years before.  the night before the Trading Post was to be installed, Jeff had begun to disassemble the Little Tykes set.  Ellie freaked out.  Melted into a total puddle of toddler. So the Little Tykes set stayed.

Almost a whole year later, there were still two playsets in my backyard.  In my spazzing out during my last week of pregnancy, when I started pretty much throwing everything out that wasn't nailed down and one of the casulties was the playset.  Friday was the day it was scheduled to go to a new family. 

I'll go on the record here and say that Jeff was against this project, cause he knew that Ellie would freak out.  My response, being the hard hearted mommy I am is that into every life some tears must fall and we simply don't need two playsets.  Also, we plan on using the proceeds from the sale of the set to build an enormous sandbox, so don't cry for Ellie, Argentina.

Anyway, Friday came, and I took the kids to Johna's so they wouldn't have to witness the dismembering of the playset.  Saturday, we went to Mom and Dad's house for Easter weekend, and no one noticed the missing playset before we left.  The girls spent a couple days in Salisbury and they came home today.  The girls wouldn't nap, so in a fit of frustration, I sent them outside by themselves.  I sat down at the computer to do some important Facebooking, and that's when I heard the realization hit.... "Where's my PLAYSET????"

I went outside to see Ellie in tears, trying to get Maggie to be upset with her.  "Maggie, it's gone!  It's gone!  Where did it go?"  I grabbed Ellie up onto my lap and gently explained that the Easter Bunny had taken the playset to another family.  I said "you know how you got a new Zhu Zhu pet from the Easter Bunny?"  She nodded and I continued, "well, you got a new toy, so we had to give another away."  Zhu Zhu pet for a playset?  C'mon Mom, even a 5 year old knows that's a shitty trade.

Ellie is normally my mild mannered child, but when she melts down, it's a full on Silkwood.  She was on my lap explaining to me how much the playset meant to her when she pulled out, "It was on my list of things to do this summer."  I had to literally bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing.  "You have a list?" I asked.  "Yes!  I was going to swing, roller skate, pick flowers, play ball, slide on the colored playset, ice skate, and pick more flowers."  Kid's been making plans without me apparently.  

Finally, I was able to convince her that her entire summer wouldn't be ruined, and I told her that she could pick the spot for the sand box.  The combo of many hugs and kisses and some control seemed to do the trick and she was fine for the rest of the evening. 

Lesson learned?  You can't pull as much over on a 5 year old as you can a 3 year old!