The Lass’ Morning

The lass was … in a mood from the moment her feet hit the floor this morning. She came down stairs and groused about being hungry. When the Wife asked her to go get dressed, she defiantly replied “No.” When she was asked thereafter, she stated she hated getting dressed because she “hates the shirt with buttons because they are too hard to button.” She hated the pants to, because of the “button” as well. Charmingly consistent. Unfortunately for her the pants have a snap, not a button. Regardless, she still didn’t like them.

Then she couldn’t decide what to eat. She didn’t like anything we suggested. I have to say, the ability of a child to refuse food has been the best illustration of the old adage “You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” I would have never thought it possible for a child to so consistently refuse to eat anything suggested. Especially this morning, if it wasn’t her idea, she wasn’t interested.

After that, she settled down enough to be willing to watch TV. Of course. But she still didn’t have shoes or socks on and all of her previous antics had eaten into her viewing time considerably. Plus, I decided that in order to be out the door in a reasonably on-time fashion I better start getting her going. Naturally, she didn’t want to put on shoes an socks. She couldn’t find her backpack (because, you know, it was hanging on the coat rack). She even claimed she’d left it on the bus- a plausible scenario that stumped the Wife and I for a few moments, although I swore I remembered her getting off the bus with it yesterday. The boy solved the mystery by finding it exactly where it was supposed to be.

By some sort of miracle, she now had her socks and shoes on as well as her backpack. Now we just had to get her to put on her vest. Yes, everything was a battle this morning. When we finally walked out the door, I asked the boy what car he wanted to take to school. He chose the smaller car.

The lass hates the small car.

She whined about how she didn’t get to choose which car to take. She wanted to choose what car to take.

Mind you, to this point, neither the Wife nor I had yelled at her once all morning. The Wife had calmly sent her to the corner for a timeout, but that was it. Despite all the attitude and general foulness.

Which made her final comment, as we left the driveway for school, particularly amusing to me:

“Parents aren’t ever nice.” she stated.