25

Battle

25.  That's the number of minutes it took to get Avery into her car seat after a less than stellar playdate this afternoon.  This morning we met some fellow families formed via open adoption.  Avery was the oldest and definitely the least willing to share.  I was the mother who basically had to pick up and leave because my child kept screaming and snatching things.  At this point, my Mother Self Esteem was still fine.  I've been around enough two-year-olds to know that anyone who would think, "Man, why doesn't she do something more effective?" doesn't yet have, or doesn't remember having, a two-year-old.

Anyway, we get to the car, I attempt to get Avery in the car seat, she rebels.  I try to make small movements each time she breathes in air to get her, bit by bit, loaded into the car seat.  After about five minutes, I gave up on that.  I thought maybe she needs to go potty and just can't communicate it due to all the, you know, screaming at the top of her lungs.  So I get the potty from the back of the car and bring it around.  To which Avery responds, "I no want to go potty!!!!!!" I said that was fine, and resume trying to get her into the car seat.  No dice.  Repeat physical battle described above.

Please note, if I used any more physical force, we'd enter bruising territory.  She would just arch her back and slide down the seat.  If I put her arms through the belts she'd remove them the moment I tried to do the buckle around her legs.  There was simply no physical way to force it without hurting her.

I figure, OK, we'll just chill in the car for a while and then she'll be fine.  So we stop.  She says she has to go potty, so I take off her pants and then she again screams, "I no want to go potty!!!!!"

So now she's standing there with no pants and no underwear on and just watching the people in the cars around us.  I'm sitting there in the back seat wondering if we're ever going to get home.  At this point, I'm still not frustrated and still calm.  We watch the world go by for 5-10 minutes.  I explain, calmly, if she's not going to go potty, then she needs to get in the car seat.  The moment I touch her, the battle ensues again.  Another five minutes goes by and I have again failed to out maneuver her into the seat.  And now I'm feeling a lot of frustration.  I have to pee*. I'm standing in a car with a pantless toddler screaming at the top of her lungs.  I can't imagine this situation would look good to anyone walking by, but I try not to think of that.

Finally, I decide to call D.  I'm not sure what I thought he would be able to do, but I guess I just needed another adult to talk to.  Of course, D is at work and can't do anything; he does offer the good advice of stopping, finding a bathroom, walking around so we can both calm down, and trying again.  However, at this point, my face is all puffy and I'm defeated, so I figure I'll call Rachele and cry to her about my defeat at the hands of a 2-y-o. Rachele brilliantly asks to speak with Avery and then tells her if doesn't get in the car seat, then how will she get to see Friend Elise soon?  Avery then perks right up and says, "I get in car seat!  Friend Elise!  Aunt Chele!"  She's buckled in within ten seconds.

In hindsight, I think what is going on is her trying to regain some control.  Both times this level of battle has happened, we've been in stores (well, once a store and once a coffee shop) and Avery has started to behave badly.  I've then intervened and said that's it, we're leaving.  I need to find some way of giving her some control over something on the way to the car such that she doesn't feel the need to reassert her control via the car seat battle.  At least this is my theory.  So, if anyone has any ideas of what I can do to give her some control back without rewarding her for her bad behavior, let me know.

Avery has now woken up after a long nap in the car seat.  She's happy as a clam.  As if none of this ever happened.  Toddlers are very weird beings.

* Embarrassing admission: I so wanted to just use Avery's potty right then. It would have made the whole situation so much easier ... unless someone in the very public area in which we were parked saw me take off my pants and pee on a toddler potty ... then I suppose it would have made it much worse ... which is probably why I ultimately decided that it would be unwise to pee on my daughter's Ikea potty in my minivan in a very public area.   But, yeah, I had to go through this whole though process to talk myself out of it.

Dog Walk

Avery walked the first half of the walk today, which included walking up the trail all by herself.  Since it's nice out and this morning I again had a lot of patience (all of which was used up by the car seat battle in the early afternoon, so she's now watching TV while I hide in my office), I let her walk.  She moved at quite a clip for the first half of the walk.  Then she started to dawdle and just stand around.  I gave her a couple of warnings, she still refused to continue to walk, so I had to put her in the backpack for the rest of the walk.  I can see us getting to the point in a couple of months where she can do the whole walk with minimal frustration for me.  The key is just keeping her moving (easier said than done, of course).  The dogs handle it well.  Turtle even lets Avery hold the leash without pulling at all, something she doesn't do with me. 

Parking Ticket Success?

Christie and I both got parking tickets on our last trip to Parker's Waffles.  We were both over our allotment of time to park by a few minutes, but we had paid for an hour and the lot was almost empty.  We were each charged an additional $4 for another hour of parking (fair enough) and a $34 parking penalty (totally unfair in my opinion).

Christie took the route of emailing the company to ask them to waive the fee.  They did so.  I feared that, if I were to email a short time later, it would be a less likely to be waived simply due to the timing of it.  Anyway, I took the route of mailing in the parking ticket with two checks and a letter requesting they waive the penalty portion of the ticket and asking them to destroy one check if they agreed to waive the penalty.  It now appears they waived the fee.  The $4 check has been cashed, but not the $34 check.  Presumably, these would have been processed in the same batch, so I'm optimistic that I won!  Woohoo!  I will consider it an official victory if the $34 check hasn't been cashed in a week.