You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry

So my daughter is still awake.  I made a mistake tonight and left her music player within easy reach.  So she’s spent the last hour and a half singing quietly to herself along with her music.

Given that the monitor can pick up her voice more clearly than the music player, it’s actually quite hilarious.

So why don’t I just go up there and take the music player away?  Because I’d rather she just drift off to sleep rather than provoke a tirade.

Why?  Well, let me tell you a tale of triumph that gives you the reason why…

Tonight was a momentous occasion in our household.

Tonight, for the first time ever, our daughter made tinkle in the potty…start to finish.  No staring at a small puddle growing on the ground.  No lifting our daughter quickly to the toilet, only to miss the significant action, as it were.  Totally, completely contained.

How did this miracle happen?  Well, you should know that it was time for our daughter to take a bath after a rather strenuous outing.  Recently she’s mastered the concept of stalling.  Whenever confronted with doing something that she doesn’t want to do, she quickly suggests some other activity to distract me and/or my wife from our current request.  She’s all about the alternative.

She’s most persistent when it comes to bath time.  I think this is more to do with the fact that bath time is generally followed by bed time.  In fact, she has been known to try and stall from other activities  such as going to daycare or putting on her shoes by suggesting that she’d like to take a bath.  But when it’s actually time for bath time, she puts up a fight and a fuss.

Once I’ve got her (usually kicking and screaming) into the bathroom, her primary tactic is to take advantage of our desperate desire to potty train her by saying that she needs to go potty.  It’s hard to say no to a toddler needing to go potty (unless you know she’s already gone…and gone both one and two, for that matter).  Generally speaking, I’ll get her undressed and sit her on the potty and tell her that she can sit there for a few minutes.

And she’ll do it.  She’ll sit there.  Singing songs, patting her belly, goofing around.

G-d help you when you want to take her off the potty though.  That’s when the fireworks start up.

Now, my daughter has a particular habit these days when she gets really worked up.

She pees.  Depending on the state of her diaper, this could be a benign occurrence.  Or it might be an occasion to pull out the towels and start mopping the floor.  (I take it you understand the title of this post better as well as my reluctance to pick a fight with my daughter at bed time.)

In any case, tonight I made motions as if to pick her up from the potty with the intention of placing her into the bath, which was already drawn at this point.  She started screaming bloody murder with declarations of “I never take a bath!  I never take a bath right now!”  All of the sudden…

*Whizzzzzzzzzz*

We all kind of stop.   I stop, not daring to touch her for fear of breaking some sort of spell.   My wife stops, mid-fold of some towels.  Most importantly, my daughter stops.  And looks down.  And then she’s done.

We all kind of give a whoop of excitement.  This (mostly random) event hopefully marked a whole new chapter of our daughter’s life for us.  As our friend put it, there’s a small but not insignificant chance that we might have #1 out of diapers before #2 arrives.

And for my daughter…well…she got some chocolate.

So we were all excited.