Stalling Techniques

Small Fry is the queen.

She needs to be tucked in.

She needs to ask a question.

She needs to have her blanket "not that way!"

And then, no, it needs to be another way.

She needs an "I love you" kiss.  (That's where you form your fingers--on both hands--into "I love you" in American Sign Language, and press the tips of your raised fingers and thumbs together.)

She can't find her piggy.  No, not that one.  The other one.

She took her pig Pillow Pet downstairs and now can't sleep without it.

She took some obscure stuffed animal downstairs...well, ditto the Pillow Pet problem.

She needs to ask another question.

She neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeds you.

She has to go potty.  "But you already went potty."  No, this time she has to go poopy.

Keiki is in the room.

Pa'ani is in the room.

Koa is in the hallway.

She needs her pillow.

You get the idea.

So, at naptime today, she was the last one upstairs, having dawdled over going potty and washing her hands.  And then she balked at actually leaving the living room.

"C'mon, upstairs, let's go!" I said.

She put on the brakes and wheedled, "But I want hewr to take me upstayewrs!"  She pointed to Two-D, who she'd been sitting next to while she finished her juice box.

"But she doesn't know how to kick the monsters out, and I do," I pointed out.

"Wike dis," Small Fry said, and kicked out her right foot.  "Den she can do it."

I looked over my shoulder at Two-D, who was grinning (as much as a 14-year-old can grin without it not being cool to be amused by this).  "I do actually kick."  I gave Small Fry a nudge.  "She's still not taking you up.  Go."

Small Fry pouted the whole way up the stairs...until she got near the top, at which point she informed me, in quite serious tones, that I could get hurt if I tried to go down the stairs by the banister.