BOSSY THE COW

There really is not way around it, my Ava is bossy. She loves telling her brothers, sisters, neighbor friends and even Mom and Dad [which never goes over very well], what to do. She really is a little mother hen and enjoys being in charge at all times.

I really think a lot of it has to do with the fact that she is a girl, and she is a first born. It seems like every other Mom I talk to that has a daughter for a first born finds the same sort of attributes in their child; and I find comfort in that. So I take her bossiness as just being par for the course. But this is another subject, for another post.

Anyway, as I was saying, my Ava tends to be bossy at times, and when we brought home the trampoline for the first time she she did not waste a moment starting in.

"Mom and Dad, we are going to have rules for our trampoline, right? Because Cade and Ellie only have the rule that no more than 8 people can be on it at a time. I think there needs to be more rules than that because people get hurt sometimes and fight and stuff."

"Yes Ava, there will be rules for when kids jump on our trampoline. We can talk about them after we get it set up and ready to play on."

"Alright, but I think I am going to write them all down now. Maybe we can put the list of rules up next to the trampoline so all the kids know them."

1.) No jumping on peoples legs. So specific on the body part that is not to be jumped on, no?

2.) Only 6 people on the trampoline at one time. This was Mom and Dad's rule; the kids tried to get that changed to 10 which did not happen.

3.) No fighting. Good one, as this seems to be needed on every single rule list created for anything dealing with children.

4.) Mom and Dad must be home to jump. Another one made up by Mom and Dad. There are quite a few trampolines in our neighborhood and it seems on a few of them, any child in the neighborhood has free reign to jump on them whenever they want; even when they are not home. For obvious reasons, this is NOT the case when it comes to our trampoline.

5.) No Tyler on... I stopped her in the middle of writing this rule as she was going to announce on the rule board meant for everyone who jumped on our trampoline, that Tyler was not allowed to jump. Ever. Tyler is a neighbor friend, and let's just say he and Ava sort of have a love/hate relationship.

6.) No name calling. There is quite the problem in this neighborhood of ours with a little thing called name calling. The kids generally play very well together, but at times, naturally, they get into arguments and the nasty name calling rears its ugly head. Such things as "I hate you!" "You are not my friend anymore!" along with the tried and true buttface, stupid, dumby, you know the ones. I have even heard some of the kids break out in song with the whole so and so and so and so sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G... I am certain you know the rest. And for some reason this song really gets the kids upset as someone always runs off crying hysterically.

7.) No hanging on the net. Another one Mom and Dad came up with, as the last thing we need is to have the safety net which is meant to keep the jumping monkeys safely inside of the trampoline and not face first on the ground, get ruined. And for some reason this has been the number one rule that has been broken thus far. The kids seem to be drawn to the net, poking it, pushing eachother into it, closing the zipper where you enter/exit, opening the zipper, closing the zipper, opening the zipper....

So there are the rules; and believe me, Miss Ava was still eager to add more to the list, but we decided 7 rules were good enough. Heck, if she got too out of control with them she would not have a single person who would want to come jump on the darn thing.

My own little Miss Bossy the Cow - you've gotta love her!