If you got a problem, yo I'll solve it...

There are things that I cannot change. Such as the fact that Elisabeth is trying to slowly kill me with her independent (nice word for stubborn) spirit. Many times each day, I'll ask her to do something. Her immediate response is "no, but..." As an example, today we were getting ready to go to Target to buy some cheap home decor to replace the home decor that is now covered in things such as barbeque sauce, honey, cat puke and cheerio dust (the waiting list to be a visitor in our home is long, for obvious reasons). I said to Elisabeth, who was fiddling with Doug's computer - opening the CD drive - "what are you doing?" Elisabeth said, "I'm going to play the Arthur game." I said, "no, you need to get ready to go. Besides Daddy and I can't figure that game out, it must be broken." Elisabeth said, "no... but... I am just going to play for a feeeeeeeew minutes. I can play it by myself."

"No... but" must precede 75% of the things Elisabeth says. Maybe this is an indication that I say not to do things too frequently, but when she's doing backflips off of the couch, feeding Charlotte things she's not supposed to be eating yet, touching daddy's computer with slimy hands, not going to the potty when it is very clear that she needs to - I have to tell her not to do these things. She's 3. She needs direction. Hearing "no, but" precede everything out of her mouth is killing me. I have a plan in place to cure her of this, involving timeouts and every other aresenal in my bag, but that usually takes a few weeks. I don't need to eliminate it. I just need to lessen it.

There are, however, things I can change. Elisabeth's other way of driving me nuts these days is chewing on her hair. Normally I wouldn't care. But I am the one who has to wrestle her daily to brush her hair and then weekly to wash it. Both of these tasks are daunting to say the least. The washing has crossed the line into abuse, I fear. Dumping water on her head while she screams bloody murder. Anyway, the chewing of the hair isn't helping. It makes her hair crunchy, ratty, and brittle. All of these things lead to tangles, which are my nemesis because then I have to hold her down and brush her hair. After her 53rd warning of the hour to stop chewing her hair, I carried through on my threat of cutting her hair right off.

She was thrilled with the idea. I was mostly thrilled with the idea. I got out the hair cutting stuff. Got her a stool and some books to prop her up on. Then I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. So after calling my mother and my neighbor, both of whom have raised little girls, and getting no answer from either of them, I consulted the oracle of oracles - google. A quick search for "how to cut hair" yielded a page showing how to do an angled bob. I quickly read what they had to say, and dove in with step one.





So after step 1, I had a panic attack. I had no clue what I was doing. None. I couldn't let her sense my insecurities, so I started trying to figure out where the nearest salon that might cut a 3 yr old's hair was. Then I decided that I had already started, I would finish and if it was that bad, I'd take her somewhere to have it fixed. I went back to consult my google find. Things got complicated here. There were words I didn't understand. It was obviously drafted for someone who had been through beauty school which I, most definitely, have not. So I begun to wing it. I mean, I've had my hair cut approximately 31 zillion times - see one, do one, teach one - right? I began by determining the length the front needed to be so that she couldn't chew on and worked backwards from there. She was really frustrated with me because it took so long. But I think, in the end, the results are good!



For a comparison, here's a picture I took of her at the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum on Friday (she's in a Cessna)



So, we still have the "no...but" situation, but the crunchy hair situation has been resolved with a little help from my friend Google. And did I mention that I did at least 75% of the haircut with Charlotte strapped to my back to keep her from screaming her head off? Fun times. Sadly, I can't threaten to physically remove too many things if they are the source of irritation for me. I'm pretty sure that would justify calls to the authorities. But hair? That I can change.