Future friend, perhaps?

It seems that I overestimate Sophia's naughtiness sometimes. Her little tantrums she throws out of tiredness in public always appear so massive to me, yet everyone looks at me as if I had an arrow through my head and says, "This? Oh, this is nothing..." In the past when she's been at a babysitter, sometimes for an entire day, I ask how she was and the responses have been "Angelic", or "What a good helper!", etc. Each of her sitters have children themselves, so this opinion is relative, of course. I, having only had Sophia, base all of my experience on her, to where a "bad day" could be one in which she has opened her mouth really wide at me and let out a sound that is similar to when someone has an incorrect answer on a game show. It's really her biggest form of protest. Doesn't sound very naughty, but it is, because right before she does it she gives me a really naughty look - eyebrows knit together really tight, bottom lip in a bulge. And the worst part about it is that she looks me straight in the eyes: EEEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH. Again, it may not sound very naughty, but it is.

And then there was last night. Let's just say that I got a whole new perspective. We had a neighbor boy over (who's a few months younger than Sophia) for a few hours who wasn't very happy to be at our house. He's been there before, he knows us, but he just would rather have not been there. Period. In the three and a half hours he was there he probably cried for, hmmmm, three hours and twenty-five minutes (it was actually more like an hour and a half, but it was evenly dispersed throughout the night). We tried everything we could to make him happy: put on Baby Einstein's Things Around the House, offered snacks and drinks, read books, went sledding outside under the beautiful stars.... What really broke my heart, though, was watching Sophia try to cheer him up. She offered him her favorite toys, like her elmo and ernie dolls, she tried to share her snack of grapes with him, and she told him it was ok. On the sled ride I even saw her leaning forward and hugging him. It seemed she was only making things worse, though. As she got closer to him he would scream louder. Eventually, he even hit her (not very hard) to try to get her to get away. Finally we just had to encourage her to play somewhere else because he didn't want to be happy right now.

She went away, but always attempted to make ammends with her "friend" as she called him. And I was so proud of her - for being the opposite of naughty. For being so generous, and helpful, and understanding that her friend didn't want to play with her. That he was just sad and missed his mommy. Isaac kept telling her what a nice friend she was. Maybe if we keep telling her that she'll really be a good friend one day.