Her own worst enemy.

[feldman]

Um. Hello

Hola!

In lieu of an update, here is a list of things that will swallow one's time if given the chance:

1. parenthood
2. midlife crisis
3. injury sequelae in the middle-aged body
4. jobs with ill-defined descriptions

Like any prodigal child, I come bearing a dilemma. Namely, Cmonkey.

Cmonkey is now 2.75 years of age and has grown as many inches in the last two months. Her vocabulary is gobsmacking and she's learning how to read. She is bent on world domination. She has also begun to manifest a devastating perfectionism that I know too damned well, having struggled with it myself and having seen my brother wrestle with it as well.

My brother, for context, drew realistic suspension bridges at age 3. They created a gifted program for him in elementary school, and relaxed the entry standard so he wouldn't be the only one in it. As a hobby, he converted his automatic car to a manual trans. He's now an urban planner. I still don't think he realizes how brilliant he is.

Cmonkey has been out of diapers for about six months now. She's also contending with occasional growth-spurt related digestion issues in which there will be a pause of a few days and then suddenly she will unleash a turd the approximate size and shape of a guinea pig. Yesterday, she ate lightly, and her belly was hurting her. We rubbed it for her when it bothered her, went to the potty unproductively several times, put her in comfy pajamas and went to sleep (prunes being the next line of attack come morning).

I'm awakened last night when she comes to our bed to cuddle, occasionally whimpering. We soothe her, but she's not buying it, and I realize she's wearing jeans.

ME: What happened to your jamma pants, beanie?
CM (quietly): I pooped in them.

Let me give some context here:

1. We have two 16 year old cats, one of whom is dealing with incontinence. More to the point, Mr. F and I are now quite adept at gamely cleaning up mammal excrement around the casa. No big deal. We've also weathered poop in the bath with aplomb.

2. Upon study of the scene, not only did Cmonkey rouse from a sound sleep to poop, she also:
a. made it to the bathroom
b. got mostly onto the potty
c. caught a turd the size and shape of a doublewide railroad spike in her jamma pants
d. removed said pants and set them neatly on the stepstool with the turd inside
e. wiped effectively
f. found clean jeans
g. zipped and *buttoned* them
h. alone
i. in the dark
before coming upstairs for support.

3. For someone aged 2.75 years, who only transitioned to the full-size toilet 2 months ago, this is equivalent to leading a mission to Mars.

Here's the kicker: she sees this as a failure. As she's not ashamed of poop itself, or us helping to clean her up, I'm not even sure what standard it is she's envisioned and not met.

I have no idea how to even begin to address this.

Comments

[ropo.livejournal.com]

Poor wee CMonkey! Since she's such a smart cookie, maybe explain it to her like you explained it to us -- tell her all the stuff she did right, and how proud you are of her for doing all that all by herself. Or something.

She's gonna be a handful, isn't she? ;-)

Hope 2 through 4 in your list above let up for you, too.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

She's spookysmart--and since she's developing Mr. F's charismatic emotional intelligence, all we can do is make sure she keeps talking to us and trusting us with what's going on in her head.

But yeah, we're going to be running to keep up with her.