A common piece of advice I heard as a new mother was to lower my expectations. And it's good advice, though the way in which it applies to life as a parent continues to change as Ally grows (we, of course, stay completely the same and never grow either up or out). With a newborn I learned to lower my expectations for the cleanliness of my home, the quantity of my physical activity, and the quality of my sleep. But generally these expectations involved changing my life and place in the world. As Ally's sense of her place in the world changes, a.k.a. our little dictator earns her stripes, I'm also learning to lower my expectations for her behavior. So here's a list of things Ally has done, say, within the past week that I thought a child of mine would never do.
- Refused a healthy lunch of chicken, brown rice, and broccoli and demanded a microwavable bowl of chef-boy-ar-dee macaroni and cheese.
- Fell in love with a pink highlighter found on the ground at the playground, which she carried until I pried it from her hands and she sobbed.
- Poked me in the eyeball and said, "eye."
- Ran through the condo naked as I chased her with a diaper.
- Watched her Mama ignore her requests to "color" because Ally refuses to let go of crayons once she has them and colors everything in sight.
Perhaps the key conclusion though is that changing my expectations means also realizing that even when all of these things occur within a single afternoon, Ally will still turn out ok. Probably.