Thursday, January 13, 2011

when no means yes

It started snowing Tuesday night, and was supposed to snow all Wednesday. So with three or four inches (that were quickly being cleared away) my husband's university closed down, and we got an unexpected snow day. Yes!

My husband left mid-afternoon to do some errands. He popped back in to grab something before running off to the last one. He asked Kiddo if she wanted to go. She said, as always, "no, I'll just stay inside." We pushed her a little, because a lot of time she says no, but means yes. We even went so far as to start putting her socks on. At this point, her no's had started to be just a little hysterical, so we backed off and told her that she could stay home. She happily started twirling again, and my husband finished getting ready to go with his feelings slightly hurt.

As soon as the door closed, with daddy on the other side, she let out a horrendous cry: "Wait! I wanted to go with Daddy!" And then she started crying and crying and crying. I almost ran after him, then realized that a little dose of consequences would be a good thing. I figured she'd cry for a moment, then forget, and move on with life.

She cried the entire time he was gone (mercifully, only ten minutes or so). She kept insisting she wanted to go, I kept reminding her she had said she wanted to stay. In reality, I laughed at her most of the time. She was so intent on being sad. I tried to teach her how to be sad without crying, but that just started her off more. So we took pictures.


My mom says that Kiddo cries about emotions. This story, juxtaposed with an incident today, shows that. Today she fell backwards down three steps, landed on her back and hit her head. She certainly cried. But after about a minute I explained I couldn't really comfort her until we got to our friends' house and gave Babs to someone else to hold. So she stopped crying, we walked upstairs. When we walked in, Angelina was on TV, and that was the end of that.