A motherhood milestone

A couple weeks ago, Anna got in the car after preschool and informed me that she was in love with a fellow preschooler. (We'll call him Blake.) Now, she has "liked" boys in the past, which amounted to nothing more than one or two sentences about how she liked them and had thought about marrying them, but this only happened once or twice last year.

This time, the love was effusive. She went on and on for several sentences about how much she loved Blake. She was so in love with him, she said, and definitely wanted to marry him. This was so out of the blue and uncharacteristic, and it carried on for several days.

So I decided to dig a little deeper. I asked her why she liked him. She couldn't really answer except by saying, again and again, that she was SO in love with him. I asked her if Blake liked her. She wasn't sure. Then I asked if he was nice. She said she didn't really know. The outlook did not look good.

Anyway, the love affair lasted for about a week. One day, Anna told me that she didn't like Blake anymore because he punched her. Internal freak out. WHAT?! That's not what any mother wants to hear. I asked her more about it and found that Blake apparently liked to prove how strong he was by punching people and having them punch him. I almost freaked out again. "You punched him?" Luckily Anna said that she tried but she didn't actually touch him.

So that was that. I was pretty proud of her for not liking the kid who punches. That shows excellent beginning discernment skills, in my book.

But then. (We all knew there would be a "but then.") Today she announced that she was in love again. She and Blake were back in business. When I asked her why she liked him again, she said, "Because of his coloring." I loved this so much. She went into great detail about how well he colors and that the blue lion he drew today was amazing.

After all the gushing, she said, "Is he starting to sound like someone good to marry?"

"Uh, no..." I said. But I loved that she was asking me. How do I put this? "Being good at coloring is nice, but I think it's more important to be kind and thoughtful and fun and smart."

"And do nice things for me?" she asked.

"Yeah." And not punch you.

Then she said in the cutest voice ever, "Ah! Now I understand."

I did not know that lessons in dating would begin so young. But I'm glad we've made at least some progress. And I wish people liked me for MY coloring. I'm really pretty good.