Monday, October 18, 2010

Ferocious

Certain things that my kids do drive me nuts.  For instance, my oldest freaks out when I have to cut her toenails.  For the record, I've never once, not even when she was a baby, cut her or made her bleed.  (Now, the other kids... )

Anyway, she'll reluctantly give me her foot and then freak out and jerk it away right before I clip the toenail.  It's worse when she's tired.  (Which is when I always get the notion to cut her nails...  Apparently, I like a challenge). 

The other day, I called her into the bathroom, having noticed that her toes were beginning to resemble talons instead of sweet little girl feet.  She slunk into the room and gave me a look as she ever-so-slowly brought her foot up to my lap.  I held onto it, grabbed the clippers, and made a motion to go toward clipping her big toenail.  Just as the clipper touched her toe, she jerked her whole foot back and started whimpering.  "I don't WANNNNA have you cut my toooooenaaaaails!"  I gave her a look and told her to give me her foot.

And repeat. 

After 3 or 4 more times, I was completely exasperated.  I dropped my voice to a fierce whisper, looked at her and said, "LEXI. GIVE. ME. YOUR. FOOT. RIGHT. NOW!  If you keep jerking it away, I'm going to end up cutting your toe off!  NOW GIVE ME YOUR FOOT!"

We stared at each other for a split second before she dropped into a crouch, balled her hands into fists and hissed, "NEVER!" at me while punching a hand into the air.  She totally looked like William Wallace, "You can take my toenails, but you'll never TAKE MY FREEDOM!"

The whole effect was so ridiculous that I burst into peels of laughter. 

So did she. 

The nail cutting went slightly more smoothly after that.  Slightly.  At the very least, she found a way to diffuse my temper and get herself out of trouble.  Because I laugh every single time. 

9 comments:

  1. She is so cute!! Love that story.

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  2. I can totally picture it. She's something else!

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  3. To get Abby to quit the crying during hair-washing time I asked if she could giggle the whole time. Worked like a charm!

    (Have you tried just using a nail file on her nails? Worked for Abby for a long while, now she's cool with it.

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  4. Oh Lord. Aiden can NOT handle getting his toe nails trimmed. I have to practically lay on top of him. I hate it! I feel awful!!!!

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  5. Oh this made me laugh. I read the Braveheart bit to C.
    Glad the situation ended well. =)
    I clipped Anna's finger once when she was tiny and felt so bad... Chris has been nail clipper since.

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  6. Gosh i love it when they do that. It is so hard to be mad at them when they use crazy people logic.

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  7. Oh dear... I can imagine this happening! Thanks for the grin.

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  8. This one totally made me laugh out loud!! love it!

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