Christine is now to the age that she can make up excuses. Some of them are quite sophisticated. Enjoy!
When she does not want to eat any more food: "I need to go pee on the potty." (If you buy into this excuse and usher her towards the bathroom, she will tell you, "Oh, I'm just fine." and then go try to play.)
Another tactic to avoid eating food is to claim it is too hot. Then if you cool it off, "No I not want it. It's too cold."
When she does not want to pick up her toys: "They're too heavy. Daddy want to do it." Or if it is a specific toy under other toys, she says, "It's stuck." When we send her to look for something, she often comes back after the shortest possible attempt to look for it and say, "It's lost. I not find it." We have turned this excuse into a great game where we call the Go-Getters to go and look for the item (On Mickey Mouse Club House they have a team of characters called the Go-Getters who search for things.) To start the game we have to look for clues or as Christine calls them "plues". She quickly realized the best way to get clues was to call the item on her fake cell phone and then item would tell her where they were. Since we don't have the real Go-Getter action figures we use substitutes. Piglet is Daisy, Little-people Cow is Clara bell, and Princess Bell is Minnie. It can be quite confusing later when we are trying to find "Daisy" and trying to remember who she actually is.
Another tactic when avoiding picking up her toys: She'll stand still with her outstretched arm toward the object and then say, "Can't reach it. Mommy want to do it." Last week she stood over a toy, locked her knees made a pitiful attempt to reach the toy and then with fake frustration, "I can't reach it!"
As you can tell a common excuse with any situation is to say that either Mommy or Daddy wants to do it. However, since Mommy and Daddy can refute this assertion, a newer tactic is to say that one of her stuffed animals wants to do it. In fact in our family Lamb Chops, Tangy Bear, and Doodle Bear are quite opinionated. If she doesn't like an outfit then "No Lamb chops wear that." On one occasion, we found her toys spilt all over the floor and said, "Christine what happened to your toys?" She responded, "Made a mess. Doodle Bear do it."
Christine likes to change her outfits a lot. Usually we get the excuse, "They not match." or "They are dirty". We have had to set a family rule that we can only have one outfit per day. Several times we have caught her buck-naked pulling out all the clothes from the bottom drawer of her dresser. We say, "Christine, what did we say about changing your outfits?" She responds "No, it's itchy."
She has picked up a few excuses from Mommy and Daddy. One day we asked her to come help make the bed. She responded, "No, I'm busy." Yesterday, I went to her room and asked her if she wanted to color a picture with Daddy. She responded, "No, I have a project." What was her project? She pilled her stuffed animals in her box and climbed in on top, and then smiled and said, "It's comfy!"
She has one excuse that we have yet to figure out how she came up with it. When getting ready for family prayer, we say, "O.k. now we fold our arms." She responds, "Oh no they're sticky!" and then tenses her arms like their stuck and can't be folded.
I can only imagine what she is going to be like in a few years as her excuses become even more elaborate!
