My kid is smarter than me

I don't think I can play with Carmella anymore. She is the little girl who I never liked because she was perfect and always right. I should also add that little girls like Carmella never wanted to play with me either. They thought I was crazy or weird.

I thought I had tried very hard to instill outside the box thinking in my kid. I pretend everything. The lie is huge in my house as it is a way more creative vehicle than the truth but somehow all this has done has sent my oldest scurrying for all things black and white. Order vs Chaos again.

Carmella got some new toys for her birthday that are crafty and non-Barbie oriented. Toys I was thinking I could have fun with. Beau was napping so I got out the Ello set. This stuff is cool. It is millions of little bright colored pieces and you can construct ANYTHING with it--people, houses, cars, flowers, pets, little universes. I just started making a series of town houses and told her to make some people. She was like " No. Mommy you are doing it wrong. Look at the box! Where are those directions. No! No! That doesn't go there. Here," she shoves directions in my face, "Look! This is how you do it." I tell her those are just guidelines that you can do whatever you want.

So she followed the directions and I did my thing and her stuff, of course, looked better. So much for creativity.

Then the other day she was doing a book of jigsaw puzzles and I went downstairs to do it with her. On each page of this book there is a different fairytale princess puzzle--Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella etc. She had dumped all the pieces into one big pile. I was like oh no! We are never going to get all those pieces straight. So I took the book from her and started trying to do the puzzles.
"No mommy, that doesn't go there. That one is Snow White. No, that is Rapunzel. Here let me do it." She took the book from me and she did them all. Quickly too, I might add.

How dumb am I that I can't put together puzzles a five year old can do?

Then yesterday we were riding in the car and she was listening to her Storybook Princess CD and following along in the book. I looked back and she wasn't turning the page and the lady was talking. I said "Honey, you need to turn the page."

"Mommy," she said "She hasn't said turn the page yet."
"She is reading. You better turn the page" I argued.
"No,she isn't. She will tell me when to turn the page" she countered patiently.

Then the lady said "Now turn your page to read along to the story of Cinderella."

Damn it, she even has better listening skills than me.

I don't think any of this bodes well for me in the teenage years.