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I love, love, love this little person who is my daughter! She is the funniest, most frustrating, cutest and most all-encompassing person I know. I began to be concerned that, when I discipline her, she may think I don’t love her anymore so I began a game that asks “Does Mommy still love you when (fill in the blank)?” The fill-in-the-blank answers ranged from “when you don’t listen to Mommy” to “when you throw a fit” to “when you are happy” (just for a little balance) and beyond. You get the idea.

This game spawned another game called “Mommy Would Still Love You If” which consists of me making the statement “Mommy would still love you if” and filling in the blank with some random, ridiculous statement. Past statements have included “Mommy would still love you if you had no eyebrows and two belly buttons” and “Mommy would still love you if you had green hair and one eye.” Well, the other night we were doing “Rocking and Shnuggling” before bed time and out of her mouth pops “Mommy would still love you if you had three toes and no bottom!” We weren’t even playing the game! I nearly fell out of the rocking chair laughing until tears ran down my face. She was so proud of herself that she had made me laugh so hard. And I was struck by just how much she is becoming her own little person. I need to do everything that I can to foster that because she is just so precious and such a great little person. This realization really helps me to deal with the times when she is smirking at me just waiting for me to get to “three” thinking I won’t give her a time out or when she is kicking and screaming yet again for I-don’t-really-know-what-reason or when she looks at me and goes ahead doing the thing I just told her not to. This is all part of the bargain and my job is to put aside my random issues that get triggered by this behavior and help her to be the person that she’s going to become. This is Mommyhood and I really love it. Yeah, I’m a sucker for Toddler Cuteness…