It's Good to Have Goals

This one is much more light-hearted than the last one, I promise.

Anna has been very concerned lately with what she is going to do with her life.  For some reason, she is distressed that this isn't settled, although I have reassured her many times that she has plenty of time to figure this out - very few people have declared their major by the first grade.  (And some people, like her father, change their majors five times or more in college, so really it's all relative.)  But she persists in wanting to figure this out. 

For the past year or two, she has insisted she wants to be an animal doctor.  I actually can see her doing this one day as she is a total nature freak and loves every living creature she comes into contact with.  She is against smashing bugs in our house, she wants them rescued and taken outside.  She is also annoyed with me because I won't let her bring the roly-pollies in the house. 

However, she has been in a very "I wanna be like Mommy" mode lately.  She wants us to wear matching clothes, matching nail polish, and do everything the same.  Everything.  All of the things.  So it didn't really come as much of a surprise that she announced a few weeks ago that she didn't want to be an animal doctor anymore, she wanted to be a teacher.  Ok, cool Anna.  Whatever.  You're still six.  Dream big, but you've got plenty of time.

Then, about two weeks ago, she announced that she didn't know exactly what she wanted to do, but she had narrowed it down to three options: animal doctor, teacher, or McDonald's worker.  I told her that her father had once worked at McDonald's, and she responded, absolutely shocked: "REALLY?  WHY DID HE STOP?!"  (I am sure visions of free Happy Meals were dancing in her head.)  I told her that it didn't pay very much, and that deflated her McDonald's dream a little bit.  Then I told her that the workers didn't get to eat the food for free, that they still had to buy it.  That pretty much killed the McDonald's idea.

Today she announced that she WAS going to be an animal doctor, and when she lost that job (not quit, lost), she was going to be a teacher, and after that she was going to be a pizza maker and deliver pizza.

It's good to have goals, little one.  Dream on.