My 900 Year Old Daughter

Do you believe in reincarnation?

There are days that I'm positive my younger daughter G has been around the wheel (of life) multiple times. It started years ago before she even went to school. She would make comments that you'd never expect out of a 4 or 5 year old. She made her older sister really upset once when her sister, then in the 3rd grade, was talking about how she and her best friends were planning to live in a house by the beach together. G (then 5) tells her, "You know J, you think that the friends you have now are the ones you'll have forever but they're not. People change." Ummm... how does a 5 year old know that?

We once went somewhere, I think it was in Southern Indiana, that we had never been to before. We turn a corner and G says, "Oh, we've been here before. There's a barn over there..." Yes, there was a barn. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Plus, this kid...
- will sit down with you at breakfast with a cup of black coffee
- LOVES broccoli, spinach, and asparagus
- prefers to dress in grays and blacks
- thinks pizza and Oreos are disgusting
- likes her steaks "bloody like a crime scene" (her words exactly)
- is always a think ahead planner
- for her 5th birthday she wanted to go to a theater show and get a pedicure (didn't happen)
- on our vacation last week, she bought local art (a signed painting) as her souvenir

Her biological age is 10 but I think she is really 900.

Does she look 900 to you?

 

So we are still on Fall Break but I am working some days this week. She looked at my work schedule earlier this month and noted I had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off. She tells me, "We are busy the weekend after we get home from the Bahamas and then you have to work on Monday. I will let you rest on Tuesday. On Wednesday I need you to take me to the art museum in Chicago because I want to see some of Picasso's works there."

 

Whoa. When I was 10 I don't think I knew who Picasso was. I'm almost 45 and I'd much rather spend the day going down water slides than pondering art at a museum (maybe I'm just childish?)

 

She then goes to the Art Institute of Chicago's website and types in "Pablo Picasso Blue Period" in the search box to see what they will have on display. Blue Period? What's that?

 

Well, I am obliging my 900 year old daughter and getting some sophistication by taking her to Chicago tomorrow. I asked her older sister if she wanted to go - got the eye roll "are you kidding me?" look - so it is just the two of us.

 

We decided to spend the night there. I think I'm more excited about the deal I got on our hotel room. I wanted to stay within walking distance to the museum so I wouldn't have to worry about parking. I knew all the hotels on Michigan Avenue would cost a freakin' fortune. I went to Expedia and decided to gamble on a mystery hotel. It's just like Priceline or Hotwire - it gives you a price, general location, star rating, etc. but won't tell you the name of the hotel until you buy it. I picked a 4 star hotel in the Michigan Avenue - Millennium Park - Grant Park area. The Art Institute of Chicago is between Millennium Park and Grant Park so I figured it was safe. Plus the price was right, $114.

 



We got the Hilton!!! I couldn't believe it. It is right on Michigan Avenue. This is the hotel I paid $350 a night to stay in all the times I've run the Chicago Marathon.

G has now informed me that we will be eating at Kitty O'Sheas (it's the Irish Pub inside the hotel) because she would like some potato leek soup of dinner.

Again, I think I was in college before I knew what a leek was...