clippings

When lil A was a few months old (three? six? I already can no longer remember), I mentioned during a visit to the pediatrician that she didn't always want her vitamins, to which our beloved pediatrician casually remarked that indeed I might need to outfox lil A.

outfox? outwit? trick? outsmart? manipulate? (the French word was 'ruser').

I pondered and pondered... was it even ethical? I mean, she was clearly pretty helpless without me in the world. And she trusted me so much, you know. And ... well, did she really need her vitamins so much that I should use my experience and wits to get my way?

The things you pick up on that steep parenting learning curve! Now I 'ruse' to keep her on the changemat long enough to snap a clean diaper on, and I 'ruse' to get her shoes on when we've run out of the 20 minutes allotted in my head to her trying to do it on her own.
And who knows, maybe when she's a mom, brilliant research will have shown that this is really not a healthy basis for a relationship with your child, and that this impairs their trust and judgment, but for now, I know no better, and I know no better way. So the bribery continues: with the ceiling light in the car when she won't sit in her car seat, and with yet another reading of "off to bed, little monster" when it's nighttime.

I was cleaning up the kitchen this morning after a wonderful wonderful visit from our dear friends H&H, and clipped the little one's tiny barrettes onto the piece of cardboard they came with. the barrettes are tiny, and, you may have noticed, the little one doesn't have quite that much hair yet. But in between fashion catwalks, I diligently clip them back onto that silly piece of cardboard. And somewhere deep inside, I truly believe that as long as I can not lose any one of those 4 tiny things, and if they're safely clipped together, that I can also hold it all together in my life!