Thursday, September 13, 2007

Playing Both Sides

It's true, kids learn to manipulate their parents into getting what they want on a pretty regular basis. And, they learn to do it very young. Since she's had the verbal skills to do it almost everything is a major debate/compromise around here with Brianna, right down to what color cup her drink of water is in. I tell you, that kid should be captain of the debate team down the road.

And now Brianna has figured out that she has two parents. So these days she'll ask me something and if I say no she'll immediately run over to her daddy and ask him instead. Quite often when that happens I end up repeating, "I said no," so she hears it again and so Travis knows what my answer was. In response to this though Bree usually says, "Mom, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Daddy...pretty please Daddy?" To his credit Travis always backs me up...united parent front and all that.

There's one issue though that Bree is really pushing. Not only playing both sides but also trying to ask her grandparents and even strangers on the street for... She has wanted a dog since she was old enough to say the word. Pretty inevitable, you have a kid and you end up getting a dog at some point when the child has whined and asked enough to make you cave in. We're still holding out over here...no dog yet. But, a dog at some point in the future seems pretty certain because Mom and Dad are starting to soften and lose a little ground on the arguement. What is tipping the scales is that now Brianna has already named her future dog...Odie (this after she watched part of the movie Garfield on TV the other day). She talks about him as if we've already picked him out. She'll stroll up to one of her parents and start in like this, "Odie and me are gonna play fetch and he can bite his tail and go 'round and 'round and 'round. Can Odie come in the house? And I'll throw a ball and do dogs eat kitten food? Mom, hey Mom, can we go get Odie today? Can we? Let's go get him!" It's just so darn cute and irresistable not to mention the fact that you can just imagine how much fun she would have with the dog. At this point I start chanting in my head, "Dog poop, chewed up shoes, ripped up furniture, dog smell..." and etc. to remind myself why I don't want a dog. But, it's getting a little harder each day.

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