Brave

Have you seen the movie Brave?

Last summer we took Kidzilla to see her first in-theater movie and that was the one. I am not a huge Disney Princess fan, but this one worked for me. This princess, Merida, is reluctant at best. She wants no part of her mother’s arranged marriage plan; when the competition to win her hand gets underway, Merida comes up with a clever scheme to compete for her own hand. I like this girl.

One of my favorite scenes in this film is this one below, where Merida snags a day off from her mother’s grueling princess preparations and heads out for the day with only the companionship of her beloved steed, Angus, and her trusty bow and arrow. The song is fantastic.

When we first saw Brave, I cried like a baby through this scene. Why? This girl reminds me so much of Kidzilla… I can’t explain it, really. All sorts of things make me teary since she came along.

Zilla is a wildfire, a free spirit of sorts, just like Merida. She loves to buck the system (any system) and arguing with her Mother is one of her very favorite things to do. Zilla was already giving me a hard time from the day she was born. The ob-gyn wanted to induce, but Zilla wanted no part of it. She managed to dig her heels in and hold out until they went in after her.

She’s a tough little thing, too – in many ways. When she was just a baby, her spirit was already evident; my Sister thought we should get her a shirt with a line from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – “And though she be but little, she is fierce.”

Zilla had tubes put in both her ears at nine months old thanks to something like eleven ear infections over the course of a fall and winter. (I know…ridiculous. Poor kid.) We managed to score two chest x-rays in there somewhere as well for awful cold and flu-related nonsense. Her bout with the flu was terrifying. I have never known fear quite so real as the day the pediatrician stood in the exam room and said with a deadly serious expression, “I want you to take her for a chest x-ray.”

“Uh…OK…when?”

“Right now. They’re waiting for you. Go.”

She didn’t have pneumonia (either time) but Zilla has since learned to deal with mild asthma like a pro. Does she love using a nebulizer when she has a bad day or a rotten cold? Of course not. But she understands why she needs it and does what she has to do.

Like both of her parents, Zilla has been gifted with ADD/ADHD and all its wonderful idiosyncrasies. She’s a smart little girl and really does work to use the things we teach her about who she is and how her brain works. She is receptive to learning how to not only manage, but thrive with ADHD. She’s pretty darn comfortable in her own skin and isn’t afraid to be exactly who she is. Good for her.

Zilla isn’t afraid to try new things and meet new people. She plays at being shy for about five minutes in a new setting, but quickly adapts and throws herself into the experience wholeheartedly. This summer, she moved from her long-time daycare/preschool program to some new experiences at the school where she will attend Kindergarten in the fall. She spent a week at Vacation Bible School and two weeks in summer enrichment classes with other new Kindergarteners. She loved it all! She made new friends and is completely excited about starting school in September.

The summer wasn’t without a bump in the road, though. At the end of Vacation Bible School week, the kids were invited up front at Sunday Mass to sing their theme song together. We prepped Zilla for it all week, explaining what they would do and how it would work. When the time came, she headed up front with the rest of the kids, situated herself smack in the middle of the big kids (she was by far the smallest one up there that morning), and waved to us from across the room. The music began and Fab Hub and I held our breath… Would she sing? Would she do the hand motions? Nope. Because not ten seconds into the song, a much larger boy next to her did his motions with so much gusto that he elbowed her right in the face. Zilla cried the whole time she was up there. So did I.

When the song was over, she made her way back to us and flung her little tear-streaked face in my arms. I told her how sorry I was that she got slugged and her Fab Dad was none too happy with the Big Bad Boy who hurt his Zilla. She said she did not have a good time up there and was crying “Mom,” but I didn’t come. I honestly thought she was singing through her tears and I told her so. We explained that sometimes life is going to slug you in the face; you gotta just keep singing and doing your hand motions and tough it out. In the end, she got over it much better than I probably ever will.

Zilla is also not afraid to love with all her heart. If that little girl loves you, she loves you emphatically and you know it. She loves her Rotten Cats and is so happy to be with them, pet them, have them come in her room when we read at night. Yesterday at their annual vet visit, Zilla got to see three very new little kittens at the vet’s office after our Rotten Cats were finished. She fell instantly in love with them and she fell hard. At dinner that night she was still negotiating terms to bring those little kitties home to be buddies with the three Rotten Cats. (I’m sure they are totally excited about that idea.) We explained to her that even though we might have room in our hearts for three more kitties, there just isn’t room enough in our house. She actually cried – real tears – and said something about having two hearts.

“What would you do if you had two hearts, Zilla?”

I fully expected to hear a final desperate plea for those three kittens to come home since two hearts would mean twice as much love or something like that. But she surprised me once again.

“I would pump two rows of blood.”

She cracks me up.

Our Zilla is funny. And sweet and loving. She is strong and she is brave.

I want to be just like her when I grow up.

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