Mother of the Year...Part 2

This evening I was doing something kind of rare...I was playing with my kids. Actually, it was more sitting on the bed which is set up in our playroom and watching Sam "clean up" while Charlie chilled on a little chair.

I bought this chair about a year ago for Sam. I found it on http://www.woot.com/, which is a funny website to check and read every day just for the hell of it. I thought I scored this awesome deal on this adorable chair, and I could just picture Sam chillin' in it and reading her books before bed, or while we watched TV. As soon as we got it, we set it up in the living room.

She liked it OK, and used it mostly to put her baby on it, and take the baby off, and put it back on, and off...you get the picture. Occasionally, she would sit on it, and feed her baby a bottle. This was all pre-Charlie, while I was pregnant, but way before we decided to rock her world by telling her that a REAL baby was invading it and taking all of mom's attention. (Ironically, after we told her about Charlie, her own baby suddenly fell out of favor. Wonder why.)

So I was vacuuming one day, and she is doing her damndest to get in my way, so I picked her up and plopped her on her chair. And she stayed there, crying, but she stayed nonetheless. I was just happy to get all the shit off of the floor that stuck to my feet when I walked without having to constantly push a toddler out of my way. As I continued to vacuum, her cries continued, and possibly got louder, although I can't really be sure, since, you know, I was vacuuming. But she stayed on the chair.

In the meantime, Workaholic heard her cries and came out of the office to see what was going on. He leaned over the railing directly above her and laughed at how persistant she was being...with the crying and all, yet did not get off of the chair. I too, laughed, and we were both just amazed at how she wanted off that damn chair so badly, yet wouldn't get off because I had put her there. You know, so I could vacuum.

After I was done and turned off the oh-so-noisy machine, I realized just how loudly she had been yelling. And she had actual tears. And she was sort of standing on the chair now. Except she really couldn't stand, because her foot was stuck between the side of the chair and the cushion. Oopsy. So she wasn't staying on the chair out of some genuine, really deep respect for the mother who had put her there, she was stuck on the chair, which by now had become her own prison.

And she developed a deep hatred for that chair. For a while, we would pick on her by putting her baby or her beloved blanket on the chair just to see her cry and run and pick it up and scream "NO!" And then that just got boring and so the chair was banished to the basement. Her playroom was down there, but there was quite a bit of time where we just didn't have the time to hang out in the basement. So it has been out of sight, out of mind for a while.

Tonight, Sam stayed in her playroom while I went to get Charlie up from her nap. And when I came back, she was sitting in that chair, reading books. Just like I always pictured. And as soon as I walked in, she got off that damn chair before I could take a picture. So I put Charlie in the chair. Because damn it, one of my girls will like it.

I managed to take this picture of Charlie chillin' in the chair. She likes it. And Sam has gotten past her hatred enough to plop her baby next to Charlie and smile and giggle and say, "Cute!" But when I asked her to stand next to Charlie so I could get a picture of her and Charlie and the baby in the chair, the answer was a resounding "NO!" This is a girl who know what she likes, and doesn't like. At least she got past her fear of the chair.