Blog

Feb. 24, 2024

Day #5 of solo parenting:

And then sometimes there is nothing so fulfilling as spending the afternoon making Play-Doh cookies while the “Amelie” soundtrack plays in the next room.

Photo by Eric Coble

Feb. 25, 2024

Day #6 of solo parenting:

Not my proudest moment.

Photo by Eric Coble

Mostly we get along grandly, but sometimes her 2-ness and my patience collide…

We are leaving someplace, needing to get into the car.There’s not a great rush but I need to get home and we both need lunch.But first Lightning Bug wants to walk down a ramp on the way to the car.I say okay.

Then she wants to do it again.

I say once was enough, we need to get home. She wants to go up a small flight of stairs “just one time?”. I say okay.  She does.  We’re getting close to the car. I open her door and say let’s get in. She instead trots over to walk in the sunshine beside some trees and shrubs. I stand and wait. She’s clearly not gonna come back to the car. 

I say we need to go. She keeps dawdling. I start toward her saying, “Okay then I’ll carry you to the car.” She trots back to the car on her own saying “I no want you to carry me.” She also walks through a muddy patch. We get to the car and she then starts slowwwly circling it. I say OK enough, and I pick her up and she starts writhing “Let me down let me go!” 

I’m glad there are no police officers near.  

I wrestle her into the back seat saying, “I’ll help you buckle into your seat and we’ll get some food”.  She slides out of her car seat and climbs around in the backseat. I say “Fine” calmly but clearly done, and close her door, go around and get in the driver’s seat and sit there. 

“We’re not going anywhere until you’re in your seat.” (I may have told her that I already had offered to help her into her car seat and she said no so now she was going to have to do it herself.  Which… she’s 2… it’s a multi-buckle car seat. I already said this wasn’t my proudest moment.) 

She is still clambering around, now getting her muddy shoes on the back seat. I say, still calmly but angrily, “You’re getting your muddy shoes on the seat,” and pull her off the chair. She is near angry tears now. I reiterate she has to get into her seat, she refuses, I sit there. She sits there. Some time passes. She climbs into her car seat and sadly says “I ready”. She tries to move the straps around. I reach back and help her buckle herself in.  

I say, “I don’t know if we can come back here if you can’t listen to me when I say it’s time to leave.”  

“Why?” she asks.  

“Because I don’t like it when you don’t listen to me when I ask for your help.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the arguments.”

We leave the parking lot and start driving.

And I hear a little voice from the back seat say, very quietly:

“…I like the arguments.”