Twinkle: There's Someone Less Fun Than Me...Guess Who!

So, as the mother of a very headstrong three-year-old, I often feel like every moment of every day is an epic battle of wills. It's my job, of course, to make Twinklette into a productive member of society, and before that I would really like her to be one of those nice, responsible teenagers. Of course, those don't just happen naturally; they are the rare products of years of intense training. The way I look at it, the more I train her to act better now, the more fun we can have together long term.

Still, I want to be fun, but it's just not always in Twinklette's best interest for life to be one big party, even if I'd prefer it that way. After all, it has to be someone's responsibility to keep her from harming herself or someone else, or destroying the personal property of others, or even just getting her to take turns and share. That responsibility is clearly mine, which diminishes my fun quotient considerably.

Much of my time is spent chasing Twinklette, who takes great delight in running away from me and ignoring me when I tell her to stop where she is and come back to me. Tonight was no different. There was a time when all the kids were up moving around, and she got wild. So I tried to grab her, she avoided me (it's hard to go from a sitting position to chase mode with a sleeping infant strapped to you) and did a few laps around the room until my MIL caught her and wrestled Twinklette onto her lap.

Able to take it from there, I said, "Twinklette, I'd like you to come over here please so I can talk to you." Imagine my delight when Twinklette attempted to pre-empt my MIL's inevitable lecture by saying, "But, my mommy needs to talk to me right now." How can I help but be overjoyed by that? Not only was she using her smarts to avoid a schoolmarm-style smackdown, but she was essentially playing the mommy trump card (a subtle reminder to my MIL that I'm still the ultimate authority), and best of all I learned that there's someone besides me that Twinklette would least rather get a lecture from.

Because no matter how un-fun I am as a mother, there's always my MIL. She serves as a constant reminder to Twinklette that no one could be less fun than her.