Ms Independent

Ms Independent

Today we went for a walk. My daughter was driving me completely insane in the house, so I figured that I'd push her around in the stroller until she fell asleep. That's what it's come to now. My idea of peace is walking around DC with no particular destination like some kind of vagrant. Now remember a few posts ago when I explained why parents dote on their kids. They start off kinda slow, so you get excited when something remotely intelligent happens. Keep that in mind when I tell you this.

My daughter has gone "Skynet" on me. She's self aware. It used to be that I could put some clothes on her, throw on her shoes and stick in her in the stroller. That shit doesn't fly anymore. If you put her shoes on her BEFORE putting her in the stroller, then she assumes that we're all going for a walk (as in me AND her will be walking). Also important to note: Once you put some jeans on her, she expects that we're leaving the house shortly.

So, I put some jeans on her and she immediately dropped what she was doing, ran over to the TV and turned it off. I went to get the stroller and at that exact moment I realized that I left it in the trunk of the car. So you know what that means.
A) I'm putting shoes on her and she's going to go ballistic when we get to the car and I pull out the stroller.
B) I'm taking the jeans back off of her and canceling the whole outing and she's going ballistic. It's a lose-lose either way.

So I go with option A. We walk to the car, which once again is parked across the street from the playground. We argue the entire walk past the playground as I explain that we're not going today. We get to the car and I grab the stroller and she looks at me with these puppy dog eyes while whimpering out "Walk? Walk? Walk?" FINE! Okay, you can walk.

I decide to go to the grocery store which is a mile and a half away. I'm thinking to myself: There's no way she'll walk that far. She'll get tired and beg me to put her in the stroller. Fatigue from the walk will put her to sleep instantly, and then I can run back home and have at least two hours to myself.

Do you know that this little two year old girl walked the entire way like she trained with Dr King during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Not only did she walk the whole way, she skipped, danced and did everything in her power to make what is usually a 20 minute walk take about an hour and a half. I was more stressed out when I got there than I was when I left the house. The whole point was to do the opposite of that.

Now there was a funny moment. We got about two blocks from the store when I think she did start to get tired, but being spiteful she refused to get in the stroller. Instead, she decided to sit down on the stairs in front of this house. I looked at her and said, "Come on, baby. We gotta go." She looks up at me, then looks down at her foot. She reached down and untied her shoe then said to me, "Tie the shoe." So I knelt down, tied her shoe and got up to walk away and she untied the other one. "Daddy, tie the shoe."

I tied the other one and started walking away. "I'm gonna leave you. You better come on. Bye." Do you know that she looked at me and said, "Goodbye Daddy. Be careful. I'll miss you!" Then she turned her head the other way and started looking at stuff in the yard like my leaving had no bearing on the rest of her day. I can't lie, I'm loving the independence. I still snatched her up and put her in the stroller.