Mommy, you ALWAYS say that!

"Before we go out, you have to put your toys away," I say to Kirienne. She replies, "Mommy, you always say that." Yes, yes I do. With 4 cats, a dog, a toddler and (dare I say it?) a husband, I have more than enough to clean and spend a fair (or unfair?) bit of time doing so.

So, today, K was taking out every last item in one of her cabinets, and I told her that whatever came out was going to have to go back in before we were going anywhere. With great dawdling, lollygagging, and moseying along, slowly the stuff went back into its vault (mostly via me). The last to go was the magnetic Snow White, with its 57 small magnetic pieces all over the floor. I was losing patience with the slow progression of the cleaning and K's answer of "No" to my requests that she just tuck those pieces in their box and get on with things. Out of frustration, I finally said, "OK, I'm going to go downstairs and you can come when you've put things away."

"No! No!" she said, starting to cry. I said, "Hey, I asked you to put this stuff away, and you haven't done it." "But I did help!," she insisted, "I DID! I DID!" Most of the time, she's much more helpful or fully autonomous, but I could see that she really felt that she had helped this time and that I was being unfair, which made me feel bad.

I said, "OK, I'm sorry. You did help. What do you want to do now?" She said, breathing heavily and tearfully, "Mommy, (breath) I am calming down (breath) now. I am wiping my little tears." We had a hug, she grabbed a book to read, and not more than 10 seconds later, she was laughing like nothing had happened.

Just another morning on the roller coaster of childhood.