The scene: Todd and I working on our computers in the family room. Rollie is sick and is sleeping upstairs for the afternoon. Tiller wanders around the den, obviously bored, shuffling her feet, sighing a lot. She sits next to the sleeping dog, Quint. He growls at her. She crawls over to Simon the cat, whose tail flicks in agitation, and who eyes her with a “Touch me, you little monster, and I will rearrange your face with my claws” look.
She gets up, and and goes over to a chair nearby. She sit in it. She hums. She sings a little song. She starts barking, a high pitched woof. Todd and i both shush her, as we are trying to work, and we don’t want her to wake Rollie.
“Quiet, Tiller. You will wake up your brother.”
It frightens me, sometimes, that she is such a mercurial girl.
She is a crash of lightning. She clenches both fists and pounds the seat cushion on either side of her legs. She thunders, “Well, I’m a dog! I am a dog!”
Todd and I ignore her, as we try to do whenever she pitches a fit.
She starts talking conversationally to herself, but squirming in the chair, as if her need and desire to be a dog is painful, as if she wants to tear her own skin off her body. “I want to be a dog. i am pretending to be a dog. I just want to be a dog.” More petulant now, “But maaaaammmaaaaaa! I. WANT. TO. BE. A. DOG!”
Todd and I still have her on ignore. We glance surreptitiously at one another over laptop screens, trying to conceal our laughter.
Tiller, resigned, mutters, “Well, I will just take off my socks. i will not put them back on.”
that’s awesome. I love those moments. I am surprised at how much of my ‘parenting’ involves hiding the fact that I am laughing.
An essential parenting skill. You can’t let them know you think they are funny.