The school where Julie and Sophie attend (Sophie and I go to mommy-baby
classes one morning a week) has a little fundraiser evey fall. They have
us sell tubs of cookie dough to our neighbors, friends and coworkers,
then we pick it up and deliver it on the Friday before Thanksgiving.
Generally, I don't mind this. It's a good excuse to visit Joe's office
with the girls. Today, though, we got to the school only to discover the
cookie-dough truck had broken down and was running late. Which left me
in a bit of a quandry.
Should I take the girls home, strip their shoes and coats off, get them
interested in some activity (and in Sophie's case, the preferred
activity would clearly have been nursing to sleep because she hadn't had
much of a nap earlier because I hadn't wanted to get her down just to
wake her up in time in the first place) only to, 20 minutes later, round
up my little herd of cats, get their shoes and coats back on, usher them
back out the door and into the van (which we continue to love) and get
the straps buckled, amen?
Or should I make up some brief errand to pass half an hour, keeping them
in the car and saving us all some hassle. I chose this route, and used
the opportunity to justify a *bucks run.
We are blessed with not one but two different drive-through *bucks
nearby, and I chose the slightly further-away one to kill an extra
minute or two. I ordered my usual mocha, plus two kiddy cocoas, extra
whip. The girls love whipped cream as much as I do, I'm afraid.
Well, Julie immediately took too big a swallow and managed to
hilariously spray chocolatey foam from her mouth just as I was getting
ready to help Sophie with her first taste of cream. So Sophie had to
wait while I cleaned that mess up. It really wasn't so bad and I was
pretty successful, especially considering that I was wearing my handknit
cream-colored bavarian twisted-stitch vest.
But by the time I came at Sophie with her cup once more, she was eager
in the I'm-almost-two-I-can-freakin'-do-it-MyselF! way that she's
adopted lately. So she grabbed it and dumped about a third of the
(thankfully diminutive) serving down her front. So I wiped her up a bit,
gave her her cup back and sat down for a moment to relax, sigh, and take
a picture.
We drove home and I ran in to get clean clothes, which we changed her
into in our blissfully huge and empty third-row bench (avoiding the
whole herding cats phenomena yet!)
Whew! The rest went just as planned. We wnt back and picked up the
now-waiting tubs of dough, visited Daddy and his coworkers with
amazingly smiley and well-behaved little girls, and now we are sitting
in the garage while the girls get a little nap till Daddy arrives home
or someone wakes up, whichever comes first.
I even have som knitting in my purse.
Aargh! My two-year-old is going through that “I can do it myself” phase, too. I know it’s a developmental milestone and all that crap, but let me tell you, I HATE IT!!
Good luck and godspeed.
My fifteen year old is going through that stage too. It’s just that the things she wants to do herself are different than for your daughter.
The balance of help, support, watching them goof up, and knowing when to step in is a parenting art… as frustrating as it is. I’ve really learned to use the phrase ‘let me know if you need help with that….’ .
PS. My daughter sells frozen cookie dough for some of her high school activites…. fundraising doesn’t end for a long time either.
To me, it sounds like you are doing a good job.
I think one of my sons took more naps like that in the car than in his bed. It seemed like he would always fall asleep on the way home from whatever, and I learned very slowly that if I tried to bring him in the house to lay in his bed, he’d just wake right up. Luckily, this was while we were living in FL, so I’d just park the car under the tree right by the sliding glass door, leave the doors open in the minivan, and go on inside. I’d just sit on the couch and watch tv and look out the door at him until he started stirring. I miss that.