Never Say You're Sorry

People usually call them Pet Peeves, things that bother them on a regular basis.  Haley has several.  For example she hates it when I get water on her shirt when I am fixing her hair in the morning.  She says "Dry" and we have to use the hair dryer to dry the tiny drop away. 

She doesn't like things out of place.  While I am trying to get her ready in the morning she is busy trying to get me to put away the toothpaste, hairbrush and other sundries that her sister has left on the counter.  Big Sis is not as concerned about being neat.

When she works on the computer the desk has to be clean.  If I have left papers on the desk she will push them onto the floor, this is especially annoying to me around tax time.  If I can't find my cell phone I have learned that I should check my desk drawer because she started stashing it in there when I left it on top of the desk.

In my post Nobody's Perfect I mentioned her annoyance with any kind of spill, even those so small that we don't usually see them.  This happens quite often when she is feeding herself.  She will spill a drop of milk while eating her cereal or a grain of rice will escape her plate and land on the table.  This drives her up a wall.  It must be cleaned immediately.  Life as we know it comes to a complete stop.  This is true even if the spill is not her fault. 

I still feed her occasionally.  Haley eats too quickly.  She will continue to shovel food into her mouth regardless of how much is already in there and she rarely chews her food completely.  I have on many occasions had to retrieve things out of her mouth that she was not able to swallow because she didn't chew them properly.  I sometimes resort to feeding her just to slow down the process. 

Soup is baffling to her, I usually have to feed her that.

Haley is a carnivore, she would be happy with a plate full of nothing but meat.  I usually have to feed her bites of vegetables in between her bites of meat not only for her balanced nutrition but also so that she can give her poor throat a break.  I don't know why she does this to herself, but she always has. 

I am right handed and I usually don't have a problem feeding her if I do it with my right hand.  Occasionally I try to feed her with my left hand (I don't know why) and that is usually when the problems occur.  She gets really mad at me if food misses her mouth, falls off the fork, lands on her shirt or her pants or finds its way onto the table or floor. 

I apologize "Oops, I am sorry Haley, see even Mommy makes mistakes sometimes."  It doesn't help, in fact it seems to make her madder.  Haley doesn't want to hear it.  If I say "I'm sorry."  She yells "SORRY!" in a tone of voice that cannot be mistaken.

She doesn't like criticism either or more to the point she doesn't like to be contradicted.  If we tell her "No" she also yells back at us "NO!"  Apparently she doesn't like the word no.  We say she doesn't like being told.

Disciplining her is tough.  I don't condone corporal punishment in general.  Spanking never really worked on Haley's Big Sis and it really doesn't work on Haley.  I am not proud of the times that I have resorted to spanking her, but I can tell you that I remember every one of them and I can count them on just one hand.  When I spanked Haley it was out of frustration, usually for a behavior that was dangerous and had to be stopped or had gone too far.  I knew it was a mistake the moment I did it, but there was no going back or taking it back. 

When I spanked Haley she would then spank herself.  It was heartbreaking.  She showed no mercy.  One little swat on the behind from me and she would start smacking herself over and over, and not gently either.  I usually had to hold her hands still and try to calm her.  I then, being me, would apologize.  I am sure you can tell where this is going.  As soon as I would say "Haley I am so sorry."  She would yell "SORRY" and it would continue to escalate. 

It is extremely hard for me not to say "I'm sorry." it just naturally rolls off of my tongue and I make mistakes frequently.

Just typing these things brings them back vividly.  This hasn't happened in a long time, but the times that it did happen were really traumatic for me.  I hope they weren't as traumatic for her.

My Little Velociraptor

I am proud of Haley when she learns something new.  It is a great achievement for her, things don't come as easily for her as they do for other children. We rejoice over any advancements Haley makes, but sometimes there are things we don't want her to learn.

There are times that I want to keep her in the dark about certain things.  Take for example the child locks we still have on several cabinets around the house.  We really don't want her to get in to those cabinets.  We have to be careful when we open them so that she doesn't see how it is done.  I have taken to calling her my little Velociraptor.  If you have seen Jurassic Park you know what I am talking about.  They learn.  It can be quite scary.

I was never excited for her to learn how to unlock and open any of the doors in our house, especially those that lead to the great outdoors.  When Haley was a baby we would hold her up to the garage door opener and ask her to push the glowing red button.  Eventually she got tall enough to reach it. Even now we like to let her open and close the garage door for us because it makes her feel useful (I am guessing) and because we usually have our hands full.  Back when she was five or six she also learned how to open the door to the garage from the house, which I really wasn't aware of until it was too late. 

The doorbell rang once when I was upstairs.  I came down and opened the door to find Haley standing there with our neighbor's son from down the street.  He told me he saw Haley wandering down by his house and he didn't see me so he thought he should bring her back home.  You can't begin to imagine how I lavished praise onto that kid.  After he left I sat down and balled my brains out.  We almost got to the point of putting an alarm on all of the doors and maybe we should have, but instead I just became more vigilant and she hasn't done it again.

This last weekend was a three day weekend which meant that the four of us were together in the house for three days.  I should say the five of us because Shadow was also in the house - he doesn't like to go outside.  He was being his usual curmudgeon self though and not sitting still on the girl's laps.  At one point Big Sis decided he was going outside whether he liked it or not.  He hissed at her the entire time but she eventually got him out the door.  We always lock the doors even when we are home so she locked the door after him.  A little while later I came around the corner and there he was sitting in the entryway looking all innocent.  I swear if he could talk he would have said "Haley did it."  So yeah, Haley can unlock the front door and open it.  Oh joy.

Haley likes to let Shadow out of "his room" and he likes to wander the house looking for places to spray.  It puts me over the edge so my husband decided to put a lock on the door to the laundry room on Saturday.  That put my mind at ease. 

I soon learned that it was a false sense of security that I was enjoying.  Come Monday morning Haley had figured out how to unlock that door.  I quizzed the rest of the family and no one fesses up to teaching her how to unlock it or to even to letting her see how over their shoulders.  She did it all on her own. 

In case you are wondering I didn't say "Good Job!"

My Little Helper

I have been a bit distracted lately.  I have a lot on my mind.  I really love that when I get like this I have someone around that helps me get through it.  Haley was on the ball this morning.

When it came time for me to make Haley's lunch she started pulling things out of the cupboard and the refrigerator, I had to ask her a few questions but for the most part she basically told me what to pack in her lunch. When I was done making her lunch she anticipated my next move which was to fill out her paper.

Every day before school I fill out a form that lets Haley's teacher and aide know what she has done the night or weekend before.  I explained this paper in the post A little window into her school day.  I got the paper out and she started telling me what to write.  She said "Trains. Dad."  Which meant that she went train watching with Dad on Sunday.  Then she said "Depot." which meant that she and Dad went to Home Depot on Saturday.  She loves going to Home Depot. 

I started to write the movies that she had watched and she pointed to the right section and said "Future. El Dorado."  Which meant that she watched Back to the Future and The Road to El Dorado.  For the record we were on our seventh day of watching Back to The Future.  She usually chooses the third film because it has a train and horses in it, but since it was a three day weekend we had convinced her to watch the first and the second films a couple of times as well.  By Monday Big Sis had to intervene and Haley ended up choosing some new movies.

At this point I said "What did we have for dinner last night?  I cooked it so I should remember it." I often talk to myself.  Haley was standing there though so I guess she assumed I was talking to her.  She said "Chicken."  Oh that's right it was chicken.  Really I don't know what I would have done without her. 

I picked up her lunch and her paper and headed for the closet to get her backpack and she came up behind me with her Friday folder.  This is a folder that the school sends home with her every Friday with all of her papers from the week and any correspondence from the school that they need  us to have.  We are supposed to send the folder back on Monday.  I am here to tell you that that would not have happened today if Haley hadn't brought it to me.

I started to wonder if maybe she should stay home and help me with the rest of my day, but in all honesty I think what I really needed was some quiet time to myself.  After all it was a three day weekend.