Whining Children!

Quote of the Day: "Don't take life too seriously. You'll never escape it alive anyway".--Elbert Hubbard

My nearly 8-year old daughter (whom I call Thing One) is driving me batty. BATTY I tell you. Every morning, she whines about what she wants to wear. She whines about her choices of breakfast. She whines about the school hot lunch being "gross" and why can't she take cold lunch instead, etc. (The answer, because I've prepaid for her hot lunches, darn it, and until the money is gone from the account, she's eating HOT LUNCH.)
She whines incessantly. Please tell me that this is a normal young girl thing. She whines about the way I do her hair, without fail, every morning. ("Mommy, I wanted braids today! Not pulled back!)
And then she whines about the snack I give her for school. (Some mornings, in exasperation, I tell her that I'm going to shove her out to her school bus NAKED, with schmuck hair and no snack, if she doesn't shut up about wearing the brown sandals and the one ponytail (she wanted to wear the pink sandals and two ponytails) already. AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!

Girls are so tedious. I have two boys, and they are so easy. They go obediently back to their rooms and change when I tell them that the clothes they are wearing are unacceptable. (Um, sweetheart, it's going to be 80 degrees outside, you need to go change out of the sweatshirt and jeans and moon boots.. okay? Okay Mommy!)
They don't care if their hair is done one way or another. They are just happy to get dressed and go to school and play sports and hang out with their buddies. My point: they don't WHINE over every detail like my daughter does!

So what is it with the whining? I certainly don't whine. And that annoying thing where her voice goes up SEVERAL octaves, it makes my blood boil.
The bottom line is, this child is tap-dancing on my last nerve. I'm losing patience very quickly. This morning I told her to LEAVE MY BATHROOM and I didn't do her hair at all for school. I don't care. She can have uncombed hair.
---well I'm back.
Of course, sensitive emotional thing that she is, she started crying and I felt horrible. So I've done her hair. I am such a pushover.

I wonder if I whined like this when I was a child? I don't remember... but my mother seems to have such barely concealed glee when I tell her all my child woes, I'm beginning to think I was quite the little sh*t myself...