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the apple doesn’t fall far


The good news: Maggie seems to have inherited my determination. The bad news?

Maggie seems to have inherited my determination.

Dan would call it stubborn, but I really don’t think I am. I do listen and often ask for other people’s opinions on things. But if I run into trouble or I’m having a difficult time with something, I rarely give up. It also might be a bit of my perfectionism shining through.

Yesterday I hung our Christmas lights and outside decorations. It was a chilly day, but sunny and not too windy- PERFECT for putting up the outside stuff! I had 3 new wreaths I got on sale last year at Michael’s ($5 each!!!) that I wanted to hang underneath each window on the front of our house. The only problem was that we couldn’t figure out how to get them to hang properly. The little light hooks I used last year to hang the bows weren’t strong enough, and our windows don’t really have a good ledge to hook anything else.

So after trying a bunch of different things for about 30 minutes, we finally gave up and I only had 1 wreath hanging (our big front window had enough of a ledge to hang one wreath). I was pretend-pouting about how sad my house would look without the other 2 wreaths hanging. Of course, Dan was rolling his eyes and asking if he could please go back to cleaning up leaves in the backyard. He did, and I came inside for a bathroom break. Suddenly- it hit me. A brilliant (and sort of DUH, OBVIOUS!) solution. Why not put the wreaths on a string and hang them out the window, closing the window on the string? BRILLIANT!

And that’s what I did, and it worked, and I was so pleased with my determination. Even though Dan thought I was insane and probably wanted to clobber me with the ladder. Of course it’s not a life-altering thing to persevere through, but it’s definitely an example of how when I get an idea in my head, THAT’S HOW IT’S GONNA BE, DANG IT.

Maggie’s determination showed this morning while she was playing with stickers. She hasn’t played often with stickers, just once or twice when she got one at the doctor’s office. I sat down on the floor with her and showed her the sheet of teddy bear stickers, and she was immediately excited. But she couldn’t quite figure out how to get her little fingers under the stickers to peel them off.

I showed her one, how I used my fingernail to get under the bear’s arm and peeled it off of the page. She grabbed the sheet from me and tried one herself. It took her about a minute- several grunts and throwing down the paper in frustration- but she eventually got the sticker off and stuck it on her paper. She moved onto the next sticker, and I sneaked off to the kitchen to empty the dishwasher while she was distracted.

After a few minutes, I poked my head back into the living room to check on her progress. She was still sitting there, quietly and intently pulling the stickers off and putting them on her paper. Each one took her a while, but she was getting it. When I was done in the kitchen, I walked in and checked on her again. Every single sticker was gone from the sheet, and they were all on her paper. She looked up at me and grinned.

Her determination is GREAT for things like this. I want her to be driven and not give up and not be afraid to try things. HOWEVER. This determination is also a problem for Mom and Dad.

Like when she wants to watch Elmo when Daddy is watching hockey. Or she wants to watch Ariel RIGHT NOW, PLEASE. Or when she decides that it’s time to go jump on Mommy and Daddy’s bed. Or when she gets it into her head that she wants to eat crackers at the table. And only at the table. Not on the floor, not on the couch- AT THE TABLE, MOM.

Determination is quite the double-edged sword.

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