A Stubbornness All Her Own

I am stubborn. I don't deny it. My husband is stubborn. He probably WOULD deny it! My boys...they are all stubborn. We met our match with them. They wear it like a badge of honor though.

Our girl.....

She is REALLY stubborn! I cannot even say we met our match with her. She blows us ALL out of the water. She gives new meaning to the word stubborn!

I know many might find it hard to believe that such a cute little angel could be so stubborn, but it is true!

Hear is an example we see daily..... often when we tell her to get out of something she stares at us with that toddler I-dare-you-to-try-to-do-something-about-it kind of way. When you take a step toward her, she doesn't stop or get out of what you are telling her too, she just releases her shrill cry that would be about three octaves higher of what one might imagine when they hear the word squeal - all the while keeping her hand on what you are telling her to leave alone and staring you dead in the eyes. Let me tell you...the girl can hold it out too! Sometimes I fear that she is so stubborn she would pass out before she stops "the sound" long enough to take a breath!

Then, you go to pick her up and REMOVE her from what you are telling her to get out of. Many kids at this point would go limp and noodley (Yeah, I know - not a word). She has her own, more stubborn, way of doing it. She goes all noodley, except her back. She arches her back as much as she can and some how manages to freeze her back that way, while all of the rest of her body is noodley. When you put your hands in her armpits to pick her up, your hands manage to just slide down her arms until she is an arched-back heap of noodley limbs laying in a pile on the floor, all the while still making "the sound".

One might think "This sounds dangerous. What if she were to hit her head?" I can tell you (from experience) that when this happens she will attempt to go a few octaves higher, which apparently is not possible (apparently she DOES have a limit to her shrill) so her screams become silent. When she calms herself down she will give you the best how-can-you-live-with-yourself-after-treating-me-that-way look there is. After all, if you had just allowed her to play with the scissors (or whatever she is into at that moment), she never would have had to go into a back-bending, noodley pile that caused you to drop her and hit her head on the floor.

After a stare down and making you feel VERY SMALL, she will go get her beebe (blanket), sit on the floor and pout until she decides to go find something else to get into that she KNOWS she is not supposed to be in!

Since we have learned her trick, (and in an effort to stop letting her hit her head) we now pick her up with an arm under her neck and an arm under her knees. She is working hard to figure out a new routine to get out of that one. So far, her attempt is kicking her feet as much as she can, while rolling her entire body in your arms and deafening you all at the same time. It hasn't worked yet!

I hope you can get a little bit of an idea of her stubbornness from this explanation. We find it kind of amusing (although we don't let HER know it) that she can be THAT stubborn!