It's been an interesting adventure raising an eight year old little "woman." Not only is she smart, witty, and wise for her age (and no, I'm NOT biased, not even one little bit), but she has already earned the title of "Procrastination Queen" for our household. My mom tells me that I was exactly the same as a child and I've also heard that most kids around her age have it ingrained in themselves to be procrastinators. I like to tell myself that I can change her; through the use of constant nagging, friendly reminders, and pleading, I know that some how, some way, I can break through that hardened shell of deferment she has grown.

The skill of procrastination she has developed has reared it's ugly head in several facets of her life; most noticeably in the cleanliness (or lack there of) in her bedroom. At least once a month, I go in with two trash bags; one for outgrown clothes and toys and the other just for trash. We turn on the Kidz Bop CD full blast and spend the remainder of our afternoon bopping around the room picking up Barbie parts and dirty, sometimes unidentifiable, laundry and possibly once edible items. I praise and congratulate her on a job well done even though in reality; I've done most of the work with her standing in front of her vanity singing into a naked Barbie. She really seems to be truly pleased with her handiwork when the task is completed, but this wonderful feeling tends to be forgotten in the next week when I'm once again yelling at her to clean her room.

Today was no different other than the fact that she has assured me that she had conquered her procrastination problem and had cleaned up her room to suffice my obsessive nature. One look at her face told me that she was again putting off what should be done today, and that she was not being entirely truthful when it came to her level of bedroom filth contamination. When I walked out to her room, I could immediately tell by the apologies spilling from her mouth that she still had some work to do.

As I started to evaluated the disaster, I noticed that she had a large stack of scribbled on papers sitting on her desks and being the snoop that I am, I casually glanced through them, prior to sending them to the burn pile. In several different types of written chicken scratch, cursive, and printed font, the words, "I'M ON STRIKE" read throughout the messy papers. I guess Taterbug had been paying attention to the Writer's strike and thought that she'd take on a similar type motto in order to avoid cleaning her domestic domain. She had carefully practiced and perfected the verbiage she thought would bide her time. Unfortunately for her, it just provided hubby and I with some much needed comic relief and a reminder that our dear daughter was becoming craftier that her 'ole mom and dad.

In the end, Taterbug was again procrastinating but at least she was getting a little more creative in her way of doing it, or should I say, not doing it. And you know what? I'm glad she's got the personality she does because she certainly makes life more interesting around our household. Her wittiness is refreshing and makes the procrastination issue that much more tolerable.