The Rules According to Lucie

In recent weeks, our household has gone under new management, or so a certain four-year-old girl and her sidekick, Ella the elephant, like to think. Lucie has become quite interested in rules, especially her own rules. Perhaps this fascination came from preschool and its corresponding guidelines, or maybe this is just a normal four-year-old girl phase. Either way, Lucie and her rules -- hmmm, how do I best put this? Well, they rule.

When Lucie is asked to do something she doesn't want or like to do, she simply declares, "But Mommy, that's not my rule!" And, just to cement her point, she'll protest, "And it's not Ella's rule either!" According to the doctrine of Lucie, dirty hands before dinner, shoeless feet outside, and skipping the bathroom before bed are perfectly acceptable.

The rules of Lucie are sometimes adorable, sometimes enough to drive a parent or twin brother crazy. She loves to put her personal spin on games, from made-up adventures at the park with friends to "game night" with the four of us. She assigns her own meanings to the cards she draws during Candy Land, which curiously all get her closer and closer to Princess Frostine. While Daddy may offer a unicorn ride before bed, her rules dictate it should be a baby kitty ride instead, even though we all know she adores unicorns. The Lucie touch is everywhere.

This past week we met one little creature that didn't follow Lucie's rules, and made me just as upset as our girl. While at a pumpkin patch, a bee arrived out of the blue, and stung Lucie through the sleeve of her dress. As tears streamed down her face, she cried, "But Mommy, that bee didn't follow the rules! Why did it sting me if I wasn't bothering it?"

Fortunately, Lucie recovered quickly, with only a short bout of crying and some slight inflammation. She definitely had a point though -- if you bother a bee you might get stung, but what if you get stung while innocently waiting in line for a pony ride? That's just not right. As far as the rules of Lucie go, no bee stings at the pumpkin patch is one rule I'm more than willing to adopt.