So Cute It Breaks My Heart*

This morning, a repairman made a house call for our sick dishwasher. (Oh, it's been like Little House on the Prairie here, what with all the manual dishwashing. But persevere in times of hardship we must.)

After observing the repairman for a few minutes, Sean disappeared. He re-emerged wearing his plastic orange hard hat and clutching his toolbox. As the repairman fixed the dishwasher door, Sean busily set about fixing a set of cabinet doors. "It's an important job, Mommy," he told me.

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As you might have surmised, Allie is an independent thinker (as I write this Allie is wearing pink pajamas (hers), one white sneaker (hers), one blue sandal (Sean's) and one bright green baseball cap (Sean's)). I try to work around power struggles as much as I can because I just don't have the stamina that she does.

One thing Allie must absolutely, positively do herself ("No, ALLIE do'd it!!!") is brush her teeth. And since her tooth brushing consists of putting the toothbrush in her mouth and not much else, we have come to an agreement that she will start the process and I will finish it. But I do encourage her to learn proper tooth brushing technique.

When I say, "Allie, move the toothbrush up and down," she wiggles and shimmies her entire body, pretty much everything except the hand holding the toothbrush itself.



*Jeff and I disagree about the emotion such unfettered cuteness brings -- I say that it just about breaks my heart, and he says that it makes his heart full. Hmmm, who's the glass-is-half-empty part of this couple?