|
|
[Previous entry: "Quickly"] [Next entry: "Pictures, quickly"]
01/22/2010: "Manipulated Mama"
We've been dealing with a Dessa sponsored nap strike at our house lately. While she sleeps just nifty-keen at Nana's, she has decided that her room chez nous is a veritable playground ripe for joyous madcap adventuring. Fact is, she's pretty accurate in her summation, as her bed looks more like the plush animal section of FAO Schwartz than a sleeping platform most of the time.
She's graduated from Dee-Dah (her sheep hand puppet) and a book to greater things. I don't exactly know how it happened, but along with her (two!) baby blankets, comforter and a pillow, Dessa is usually joined in bed by the following cadre of "friends":
- a Tinkerbell pillow and matching blanket (shout out to Jeannie - she lurves it!)
- Mickey Mouse
- Minnie Mouse
- a blue and white stuffed soccer ball from IKEA
- Dee-Dah the sheep puppet
- her baby doll "Baby"
- a yellow rubber duckie
and her most recent addition, an enormous stuffed hippo that's at least 2 feet tall (shout out to the fam in Oregon!). His name is George, after Dessa's favorite book-based hippo couple "George and Martha".
This makes, as you can imagine, for a rather crowded bed situation.
I actually have absolutely no problem with her friends being in bed with her. When I was a kid I was mostly restricted to one or two bedtime companions and it never made sense to me. Who cares how many stuffed animals I packed in there as long as I slept? And Dessa generally does sleep just fine, so the ongoing addition of plushy bedmates doesn't cause me any alarm. Plus, it gives me a bargaining chip when she's being naughty. As in:
"Do I need to come in there and take your friends?" (This makes me feel like an ogre by the way. Who threatens to take people's friends from them!? A sad accident of nomenclature, I'm afraid, but still.)
"No!"
"Then be quiet and go to sleep!"
Long, thoughtful pause...
"OK!"
But sometimes even that backfires and the conversation goes more like this:
"Do I need to come in there and take your friends?"
Long, thoughtful pause...
"OK!"
And then I go into Dessa's room and she, in a display of pique I thought I would get to see only at 13 years of age, is flinging her friends to the ground in an attempt to assist me in evacuating them from her presence.
She's so helpful.
Sometimes the conversations go on a bit longer because I want to argue (after spending my work time with 8th graders, of course I want to argue with a two and a half year old! Why do you ask?). I firmly and resolutely repeat the refrain "Dessa, go to sleep!" and she offers her rationales as to why that's not in her best interest:
"But I don't want to go to sleep!" (this piteously whined, "But I don't waaaaaant to go to sleeeeeeep!" as in "I don't waaaaaant my fingernails pulled oooooout!")
or the ever popular:
"It's NOT nigh-night time!" (this is generally in rotation when it is so far past nigh-night time that the next bedtime is visible on the horizon. In effect, she is right. It's not nigh-night time. Nigh-night time was TWO HOURS AGO!)
or a personal favorite of mine, "No!" Its simplicity is its beauty, you see.
The other night she hit a real whopper of a fit and busted out with the manipulation. In general Dessa's not at all manipulative yet. Oh I know it will come, but she's still in the earnestly honest stage at the moment. Well, usually. Unless she asks for something and is denied. Lordy does she hate that, mostly because, it must be said, she asks so nicely. "May I please have...?" she'll go. Or, "May I have a..., please?" - just as we've taught her. And then, like bitches, we say no.
And she? Is NOT BEST PLEASED.
So then she approaches the other parent and asks again. Nicely. Painfully nicely. And so we're tasked with making sure she understands that Daddy and Mommy are a team and we play by the same rules, so it's naughty to ask one of us for permission and if you don't like the answer, approach the other parent. This leads to a lot of "Did you ask Mommy?", "Yes", "And what did she say?", followed by mystified and very sad silence because what Dessa wants to say is "Yes! Yes! Dear God yes, Mommy said I could have my fourth cup of chocolate milk of the day!" but she knows that what I actually did just say is... "Nope".
Anyway, after using all her tried and true favorites to get us to release her from the prison that is bed at 8 pm, holy Christ we should be reported to CPS!, after pulling out what Dave and I call "the fakey cry" (the whiny one with no tears whatsoever) and being told in no uncertain terms to "Be quiet and go nigh-night!" she yelled with all her might the one thing that she thought would bring down all the walls of Jericho at her feet, the only pronouncement guaranteed to bring her parents running to her side:
"I DON'T LOVE YOU!!!!"
Was it wrong that Dave and I were laughing too hard to mount the stairs?
**********
P.S. - Yes, I know. I KNOW. I will really try to do better. And I know I owe you pictures. This weekend. Really. Fer sure. Kisses!
Replies: 3 Comments - Read 'em!
on Saturday, January 23rd, Daddy said
She tries so hard to understand and control her little piece of the world. Like when she says, "I Want Chocolate Milk!" several times, until she is told by one of us that she should try asking. You can see her compose herself as she asks you, "Oh, uh, may, uh, may I have a glass of chocolate milk, please?"
"No, sweetie, it's almost dinner time. You know chocolate milk is for snacks."
Then she'll turn to me, in all seriousness, despite the fact that I'm sitting right next to you, and say, "Uh, Daddy? Uh, Dave? Dave? May I have a glass of chocolate milk please, Dave?"
To which I always reply, "Sure kid! Who cares what mommy thinks. And here's the keys to my car. Go get me a six-pack."
Bwah ha ha ha.
on Monday, January 25th, Mommy said
The only comment I have to make on that (I mean, other than the fact that the divorce papers are on their way, hon, because clearly you can't be trusted within a 20 mile radius of this diabolical child)... anyway, the only real comment I have is that I *love* it when she calls you Dave. She sounds like the computer in "2001".
I swear to God, several times a week she yells up the stairs, "Dave? DAVE!? What are you doing, Dave??"
I'm going to start teaching her the words to "Bicycle Built for Two" ("Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, dooooo....") so she can sing it as she falls asleep and freak us all out.
on Wednesday, January 27th, Jeannie said
omg hilarious!!!! I'm so glad the blanket/pillow is a hit :) Took me long enough to get 'em to you, fer sure. Kiki does the same thing with the please, only she signs it. She points at what she wants and smiles sweetly and signs please. We tell her, "Say it, Kiki. SAY p-p-p-lease." And she'll say "pease" very sweetly and triumphantly, and then we'll make her say what it is she wants instead of just pointing, and then then FINALLY when we've exhausted the learning points of the exercise, we tell her no because really, 4 peanut butter cups in a row is TOO MUCH, even if they're minis, and hooo boy, there is no happiness in the house for some time after that. I think maybe we might be *discouraging* her from talking this way.
|
