beauty & the beast OR jekyll & hyde (the toddler version)

today was a pretty good demo of the bean's dual nature a la jekyll & hyde midget-style.

we had to go to a busy shopping centre to sort out our banking and have some "yum cha" (as they call "dim sum" over here). the bean behaved very well for most of the outing. she was happy to play with the bead frame toy at the bank for a while and to listen to a thomas & friends story before she got bored.

then after we took a queue number from the dim sum restaurant we paid a visit to borders. there was a nice children's section in the book store where we found a book about diggers. i told the bean to take it to the reading table and she obediently did so thus allowing me some time to browse the shelves without distraction.

shortly after, though, i thought i'd better pop my head round to see how she was getting on.

she was doing fine without me apparently and appeared to be entertaining 2 ladies who were also sitting at the table. when i came up to them one of them told me that the bean had been reading to herself and pointing things out to them. (she'd the book opened on her lap.) we were soon joined by dh and they asked us the bean's age. (she's the same age as one of the ladies' daughters.) the woman added as she walked away that the bean was very good to sit and read by herself.

at dim sum the bean attracted the attentions of the servers - even though she didn't put in any effort to charm - she was either too busy stuffing her face or turned shy and quiet. still, despite not cooperating, she was rewarded with a chocolate frog by one of the waitresses!

i think things sort of deteriorated after that. perhaps the bean was fatigued; perhaps she was bored by the grownup preoccupations; perhaps chocolate was the bean's kryptonite...whatever. in any case, carpark-bound, as i wheeled her towards an escalator she spied one of those dratted musical mini-rides (where you slot in a small fortune and get 10 seconds of canned music and the airplane/dolphin/car/etc makes vague bumps and shudders). she got very excited and wanted to get out of her pushchair pronto. i pretended not to understand and we wheeled her away kicking and screaming her lungs out, "noooooo! that one! that one! noooooo! i don't go home! i don't go home!" (repeat ad nauseum)

determinedly, i avoided eye contact with anyone as she carried on the titanic tantrum on our long walk to the car. and then when we had to get her out of the pushchair she became the kind of squirmy, screaming monster-toddler i'd always shaken my head and tut-tutted at, the kind one sees devil-spawned by other parents, the kind one thinks ah, but my little angel will never do that...until today.

there was a snowball's chance in hell that she would allow us to put her into her car seat and dh didn't even whisper the idea. i just sat her facing me and pulled the seatbelt over us.

she wailed for a bit more after i calmly told her a fib: the carousel was broken...that's why we didn't see any children on it...(repeat)... soon the lie worked its magic. she was still a bit sobby but she bought it.

once she was calmer i then told her that we were not supposed to let her sit with me: if a policeman saw us he'd get very cross with daddy and mummy and punish us by making us pay a big fine, which is a lot of money.

the bean didn't like that at all. she said, "no. policeman not hurt mummy, daddy. no. i don't let policeman hurt mummy and daddy." i thought that was awfully sweet...from a little demon.