The other night, Babymamma and I were laying around in bed, in that not-unpleasant state of exhaustion familiar to the parents of toddlers. And I was thinking about this episode that had taken place earlier, in which Josie had grabbed three of her pacifiers from her crib (something she's not allowed to do, and therefore does constantly) and marched into our room and insisted on being hoisted up onto the bed and then proceeded, for the next half hour, to rotate the various pacifiers from my mouth to Babymamma's mouth to her own mouth. And the crazy thing (as I thought about it) was that Babymamma and I went right along with this game, even pretending to make ostentatious sucking noises with the pacifiers, which sent her into paroxsyms of glee. Which sent us into paroxsyms of glee.
And occurred to me: Now that Josie is walking and talking and exercising her will unto the world, she's basically like The World's Most Charming Dictator Ever. I mean, she just marches around issuing orders ("up!" "walk!" "no!" "cheese!") and we march around kind of shaking our heads and pretending that we're the sort of parents who enforce some modicum of discipline and inevitably obeying her orders.
Recently, we've found ourselves sort of asking her permission to not immediately accede to her wishes, negotiating with her, as it were.
"No, baby, we're not going to climb the stairs this morning. How about if we go read a book? Whatever book you want."
"Sorry Jos, we're not going to jump on the couch. Okay, we're only jumping on the couch for a second ... okay, that's the last jump ... okay, last one ..."
Do you guys do this, too? Are we screwing her up? Babymamma says I should just chill. But I'm starting to think that, in our effort to make Josie happy, we're risking turning her into, well, what we think of as "a charming dictator" but which might play elsewhere as a "brat."
Am I calling my daughter a brat? Not really. The fact is, she's usually insanely charming to other people, and does well with other babies and toddlers, even. I'm just wondering how other parents deal with this question of when to gratify her (constant) demands, and when to say "no" and how to say "no." Because, as should be clear by now, we're totally helpless in the face of Josie's thermonuclear cuteness.
