Miss Independent

Well, if 'Who will win the fight?' is the most common phrase by Lance & Andersin (see earlier blog); what we hear repeatedly from Laycie definitely would be "I do it!" Now, this isn't exclaimed after she had done something she's proud of, but a statement of "I want to be independent and do it myself, so don't even think of getting in my way and trying to help out!" The phrase is almost always followed by, "Needs help!"---but only after about 5 mins of me watching her struggle through it. It is so frustrating! Not because I know she is struggling and the nurturer in me wants to make life easy for her (maybe if I was a perfect mom this would be the reason), but it's frustrating because I don't have the patience to sit and watch her when I clearly know she is not capable of doing it. It makes everything take twice as long; getting her dressed, getting in and out of her car seat, washing her hands, etc... Even Andersin the other day commented, "Mom, why does Laycie say that all the time?" And if we 'accidentally' help out a bit (to speed things along), whatever has been done has to be undone and redone by her. For instance, the other morning she wanted to put her underwear on by herself. She gets a little lost as to which foot goes in which hole, but I let her muddle her way through. Then as I was giving her her 'congratulations for doing it by yourself' hug I looked down and noticed that her underwear band was flipped out. I quickly flipped it in--hoping she wouldn't notice--but I was unsuccessful. The freaking out began and tears came as she yelled "No I do it!" The thing is, I couldn't just flip the band back, no, I she had to take her underwear completely off and do it all over again! Just to ensure that she was in fact independent. Does this happen with any of your kids? Anyways, this pic--which isn't really G-rated--is after she refused to let us help her get her pull-ups on before bedtime. It just made us smile. She didn't notice that she didn't succeed, she was so proud of herself!