The drama o' the sauce.

From time to time, I find myself overestimating the brilliance of my daughter, or, more accurately, the brilliance of my own parenting. She's so adaptable, I think to myself. After all, she transitioned to a big girl bed with no significant hiccups. She'll sleep at Nana's house or on vacation. She mostly eats what we put in front of her, and she's always been pretty great with unexpected alterations to her schedule without much more than access to a wubby.

I forget that she is, in fact, a two year old, and imagine her instead to be a very small version of an adult, capable of quickly conforming to any unexpected stimuli with her usual cheerful demeanor.

And then we have an incident like we did at lunch today. An incident where Bug was provided with barbecue sauce to be used for the dipping of chicken nuggets. It was sauce that had been specifically requested by the toddler in question with the rather complex verbiage of "Mommy, ah wan' a sauce a dippa muh titten, feeeeeesss!" which, being translated, clearly means "Mommy, I want sauce to dip my chicken, please." The sauce was provided, and instantly it was determined that she DID NOT WANT THE SAUCE HOW DARE YOU GIVE ME THE SAUCE NO NO NO SAUCE THANKS. And even though the sauce was not touching any part of her food, and even though no one was forcing her to dip anything in any sauce, the very presence of the sauce, the very fact that it existed within the small realm of her control was simply unacceptable. We could not possibly emotionally move past the existence of that sauce, yea, even our entire focus must concentrate solely on the existence of the sauce and the need for its immediate removal forever and ever amen.

And that's when I remember that pride cometh before the fall, and great is the fall thereof when a mother dareth to assume she has the perfect child.

Then again...

Maybe I was right all along.