The defiance of Emma

Our house has been invaded by a team of painters. ALL of our walls are being repainted and it is DRIVING ME NUTS!! There is a very long story leading up to this, which I doubt my site has enough memory to host. In short: we moved into our brand new house almost 18 months ago, just to realise that it was flawed to the maximum. We have been experiencing sporadic attempts by the builders to try and rectify the stuff -ups ever since. The latest turn of events is that they suddenly realised that our house was painted the wrong colour (which I have been trying to tell them right from the start). This was not even the reason why they started re-painting in the first place!!! Like I said, it's a long story...
Anyway. All of the above makes spending time at home very unpleasant, so I took Emma to a tea garden this morning, with kiddies facilities where she could play. It's always wonderful to spend time with this little daughter of mine, but recently, it has become more of a challenge. The terrible two's has set in with a vengeance and she does not take well to instructions / discipline / directions. She has a mind of her own and is not afraid to show it! The following pictures are a case in point.

I bought her box of juice - nice mother that I am. She would not allow me to insert the straw for her and after trying to do it herself for a few minutes, she threw it in the sand. She then sucked some (maybe about 15ml) juice straight out the box. This quickly turned boring, so she started squirting the juice out onto the sand. Mommy did not like.

I called her name and told her to STOP wasting the juice (and my hard-earned money). She answered me with this look...


I repeated in a very strict voice that she must NOT play with the juice. She answered with a angelic (read manipulative) smile. I smiled back after which she started squirting again.

I eventually took the juice from her, but resourceful as she is, she managed to find another. When I spoke to her about this new turn of events, this is the look that she gave me... Let's hope difficult toddlers make delightful teenagers!!