my daughter can be so naughty yet so cute!!

   persistence. patience. and...i forget the other p word that i'm supposed to remind myself everyday. pretty much on an hourly basis. can i just say, there are times when persistence is just too hard. well i guess that's why i'm constantly reminding myself.     parenting is work. hard work.
  my daughter is seventeen and a half months old. she can be darn right naughty sometimes. she's cute all the time, but she has learned that purposely being cute while being deliberately disobedient goes a long way for her. she is fascinated beyond belief with things like the television, d.v.d players, v.c.r and blue ray players. we watch a lot of movies and my husband bought a blue ray player. i don't know much about it or even care to know much about but it, but i know it plays movies. it's a big deal to him and grace does not have permission to touch it. she knows this. for a long time she would try and i would redirect her attention. then i realized she wasn't hearing "no" in reference to daddy's blue ray player. so she would touch buttons or open the disc drawer and i would tell her firmly, "no." and she would be insulted and cry. it worked for a little while but she was back at it again eventually. this is that persistent and patient thing i have to remind myself about.
  i know she knows what "no" means. their are plenty of things i use it for of much more importance, in my opinion. things like the oven, the facets in the tub, crossing the hose that i drag across the driveway, that keeps the kids still a very safe distance from the road. she knows so well what the word no means that she had started to catch herself going for the blue ray player. she would instead set her hand on top of it, say "no" in her best mommy impression and quickly move her hand to her belly as if it were hot. she knows what "no" means, and she knows that daddy's blue ray player is off limits.

   she also knows what "i love you " means. it probably means feel good hugs, pats on the back and everyone is happy, in her seventeen and a half month old mind. she says it back to us, and she says it first, offering hugs and even pats on the back. "aaah ~ y'I y'ove you" she says and my heart melts into a pile of mush.

  she started touching that blue ray player again. knowing she knew full well that she wasn't allowed to i had to spank her hand. oh how it hurts my heart to spank even her hand!!! it's the worst. 'just go play with your own toys and leave daddy's alone so i don't have to spank your hand,' i would think. hand spanking only helped for a week or two. then it began again. she would go for that blue ray player and as soon as i would approach her, she would look up at me with those big blue eyes and say, "y'I y'ove you" her little way of saying i love you.     oh. no. she. didn't.
  this has, unfortunately gotten her far in her adventures with daddy's blue ray player. "grace, i love you too but you can't touch." my firm "no" is now a "sing song profession of love" and "i wish i could but i can't" type of voice in the world of toddler translation. it is no longer a firm "no".

    the other day i found myself wondering, 'who in the world is grace professing her love to?' she was all by herself in the living room when i walked in to see her one hand holding open the door and another hand shoving a movie into the machine, while another movie was already half in and half out of it. that little rascal . i'm starting to wonder, she may really truly be madly in love with that blue ray player! here i thought it was me she loved so much!!  my daughter can be so naughty and so cute at the same time. it's really working in her favor, but not her daddy's, or his blue ray player.