Monday, September 14, 2009

Food Throwing and Sassy Little Girls

On my way into the kitchen this afternoon, our Cairn Terrier walked by me with a minimum of five tortilla chips on his back.

He had an abused and defeated look in his eyes that comes with the torment of being able to SMELL food and knowing that it is SO close; yet his brain (which is probably the size of a small tomato) couldn't comprehend where the smell was coming from.

The culprit was a no brainer ~ baby M is a notorious food flinger. Food has not been flung in this house since...well, probably never. None of our other kids threw food. The boys were all well behaved little cherubs at the dinner table.

Baby M happily throws food just to watch where it goes: on walls, on the dog, on her brothers. It fills her with a glee that is a little worrisome, considering her Aunt Margit threw phones, books and other objects at her brother from a very young age and quite possibly wounded him once or twice while doing so.

I won't even get into the spitting thing that has begun to occur as of late. We are currently only giving her water because the implications of spitting other liquids in the house are too much for us to handle.

Alas, the "Laws Concerning Food and Drink" are not being followed by this little girl.

Allow me to insert a picture of how she normally looks and we'll discuss:

Her hair is usually in her eyes because she will rip out and eat whatever little barrette or clip I try to use to hold it back.

It was my intention to grow her bangs out to achieve a page boy hair cut, like the adorable little Swedish girls who grace the copies of the Hanna Andersson catalogs I receive. The unwillingness to cooperate with the barrettes (hats, sunglasses, sometimes clothing and diapers, too) is unfortunately throwing a wrench into my long term hair goal. I am being challenged to reconsider.

Allow me to add that the above picture was taken over a month ago and the hair is even longer now. I am being harassed to cut her bangs because, according to my mother, she will go cross-eyed.

Notice, if you will, the crazed look in her eyes. She has this look quite often and if I am perfectly honest, it bothers me. Because, come on ~ consider the source.

There is a bit of a screw loose on my side of the family and I can't help to be concerned about her mental well-being, especially when hormones kick in around 12 or 13. That should be the time I am going through the first stages of menopause. The boys, mercifully, will be in college and tending to their own lives away from home. Chris will be the one who suffers. I already feel a little bad about this.

She yells at us quite often with this look on her face. Sometimes it is accompanied with teeth grinding (hers) and shaking. Although we can't understand a word of it, we aren't completely ignorant about the body language and I'm sure she isn't telling us how much we rock as parents.

We need to brush up on our parenting-of-toddlers skills.

Perhaps I should subscribe to a parenting publication that will help me out, but honestly, I can't stand parenting magazines. I find them obnoxious. Well...I FOUND them obnoxious. Now, I wonder if they would not be little nuggets of helpful information in raising this anomaly, er, daughter.

Although I am getting a little old for it, we have always considered the possibility of adding another baby to the clan; however a non-elevated blood pressure is still greatly dependent upon the pills I take every morning at precisely 9:30am.

For this reason we will do no such thing in the near future. Also, Chris shared something with me the other day. "I always thought that I would want another one," he confided. "But now after seeing M's personality, I'm not so sure."

She is making us tired. The food, toy, remote control and Ipod throwing is wearing on us a little bit.

Perhaps it is a phase, or perhaps this is her personality: strong willed, independent and opinionated.

I guess that wouldn't be a bad thing, but we will need to learn how to raise a strong girl in this day in age, which is ultimately what scares the shizzle out of me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ask me some time about the temper tantrums Margit had as a toddler. Especially the one she had after the Dr said to ignore her. I had her grabbing onto my ankle and I walked outside only to see the neighbors were having a party. They looked horrified! I dragged the screaming child back into the house!

Anonymous said...

Oh, and Chris was not so innocent in the throwing business. And especially not innocent in the tormenting of his sister. They both did a good job of torment!!!