Tonight, Anna has had the most unusual behavior. The day started out typically enough, though it was Anna’s first reward-worthy night of sleeping in several weeks. She had typical behavior; partly whiny, partly good, mostly low maintenance. She had an atypically long nap; actually most days she doesn’t take a nap at all. We went out for a playgroup trip to the bowling alley, and when we returned for dinner, the unusual behavior began.

We had a lot of different foods on the table: sloppy joes, green salad, fruit salad, rice, chips and guacamole, and probably some other stuff. Anna essentially ate all the foods we’re always hounding her to eat, and none of the stuff we tried to get her to avoid. She went on and on about how she was going to only eat healthy foods and not eat chips. Further, she was going to take long naps, and by these actions grow big and strong. Through the rest of the evening, she cleared her table, used her good manners, helped to clean up, helped with Tara’s bath, got herself ready for bed, and did so with practically no resistance. I’m stunned; she has had the occasional “Stepford morning” where she has a streak of excellent behavior, but I have never seen it in the evening, nor at such a high level for so long.