Just Like Me

Have you ever had one of those days when you felt like your child (or children) existed to drive you nuts? Now, don't take this the wrong way. I love my daughter dearly. She is the apple of my eye, but this morning was just one of those mornings. If the definition of a toddler is a two year old who gets into everything, then she has truly played the part.

Now, I will have to preface this by saying that I did see this coming. I just wasn't sure when and didn't anticipate it to happen this soon, but she is my child, so I don't know why I should have expected anything else. I suppose that she is just like me, or so my mom would say. I tend to wonder though if it is so much that she is just like me, trying to be just like me, or just being a normal toddler. If she is trying to be just like me, I wonder in what other ways will she try to imitate me. It does make you stop and think about what you do and what you say and realize how impressionable these young minds are.

With all that said, this is what I found this morning when I got out of the shower:

Trying to stuff the evidence back into the bag.

Makeup? What makeup?

End to End lip gloss and perfume covered in cream-to-powder blush.

Hmm, looks like someone decided to do some "coloring".

I knew all of this was coming soon because one morning when I was putting on my lipstick I had her sitting on the counter and she was taking my lip liner and lipstick and pretending to put them on. This was right before her birthday and I thought that maybe we ought to get her some pretend makeup to play with for her birthday, but we didn't. Just a few days prior to the incident, I caught her with crayon all around her mouth. Evidently she decided to use her crayons as lipstick. She has also done this twice in addition to finding other creative surfaces to color on.

As you can see from the pictures, Taylor found my Mary Kay inventory and decided to help herself to it, but didn't bother to ask or pay me for it first. :) LOL. Funny how two year olds are. What you see in these pictures is a lip gloss/perfume combo that she used to “draw” on a compact of eye shadow, blush and lipstick. If you look closely you can see the remains of the blush still on the end of the perfume and all over the carpet.

Usually I can put on a video for her and get my shower without too much worry, but from time to time she will get into something that she knows is off limits (like the Qtips in my makeup drawer). If this had just been the first time she did this I would not have been so annoyed. I keep my inventory in a plastic drawer unit in her closet. I keep the door closed, but she has learned to open doors now. I see that I am going to have to put a child proof cover on the door knob. The first time this happened she opened her closet door and got into the makeup when I was not paying attention. I managed to get it away from her before she did too much damage. This time she got the same makeup as before from the counter in my bathroom. At least it wasn’t more makeup from my inventory.

Part of my annoyance was with myself because I had not put it far enough out of reach, so I wasn't too hard on her since it was partly my fault (or at least my responsibility). I couldn't let her off without any discipline, so rather than spanking her, I decided to try and put her in "time out" while she watched me clean up the mess. I guess in hind sight I should have made her help me – that is what Daniel did whenever she colored on the walls and the tables - but she probably would have thought that it was fun to use a big machine that squirted water and vacuumed it back up. My instinct was to make her sit in her chair and not move until I said it was okay. She was really good about going to her chair when I told her to. She did get up a couple of times to follow me and see what I was doing, but she sat back down the second I scolded her. She sat there the whole time with this look on her face like she knew that she was in trouble while I cleaned up the mess. When I was finished with the floor I cleaned her up and explained to her what she did wrong. She gave me a smile. OK, so maybe she didn’t fully understand. I made her apologize to me and then I gave her a kiss and told her she could go play. I am not sure if the time out did any good at her age, but I think she definitely knew that Mama was upset with her and that she was in trouble. I couldn't be mad at her. She will probably get a spanking if it happens again though.