Mama Doesn't Share

A is hopelessly, desperately obsessed with chap stick and lip gloss. The problem is that I also have a fixation and must keep my lips moist at all times. I have tubes of lip gloss everywhere. I still love Bonne Bell LipSmackers and I don't care who knows it.

One day I let the kid use a tube of mint chap stick while we were in the car (I gave in after she chanted: "PUT IT ON THE LIPS" a hundred times in a row). At first she did okay with it. She smeared it from her chin to her nose and halfway out to her ears, but it seemed okay because it was colorless (greasy, but colorless). Because she is two and her two-year-old brain couldn't stand it any longer, eventually she shoved her thumb into the goo and essentially ruined the whole tube. So now I don't carry any in the car. If I want to use some from my purse, I have to put my head down and apply it surreptitiously. It's kind of comical - I'm willing to hide in order NOT to deprive my lips of the grape-y goodness they need.

Alas, she knows I still have some. I have a tube of strawberry stuff in the make-up drawer in my bathroom. Every morning she comes in and starts rifling through my things until she finds it (amid protests - from me - of "Would you please go watch Diego? How about Oswald? Is Oswald on? Oobie? Seriously, Mama needs 30 seconds to herself.") But she always finds it. "Strawberry on the lips!" She smears it on until I finally kick her out.

Yesterday we repeated the usual routine and I reminded her that the chap stick is mine and that she needs to give it back.

"We have to share, Mama." What the? She must not know me very well, because I am not good at sharing. At all. Just try taking a french fry off my plate at dinner sometime if you want to see.

Apparently she is not pleased with my attitude lately because she also ordered me to time-out this morning. If I could sit in the corner in peace with my chap stick, I'd be happy to go.

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