Monsters We Create

The drive through the inferno is going surprisingly well, which means that I am bound to drive straight into a towering inferno very soon. You have to love mixed metaphors, especially ones as bad as those. My little one has not sprung a leak on me, or anything else that I have to clean up, this week. Major bonus here in having one less diaper to check, change, and smell. However, she has come to expect that every single time she makes a deposit she will receive a reward. I don't mind occasionally reinforcing a behavior that I want to see in my little ones like coming when I call them, or sitting down nicely, or not killing each other (it so sounds like I am talking about training animals here) but this rewards two or three times a day thing is getting old. So I mentioned aloud, more to myself than to her, as she was demanding a prize for a deposit "I have created a monster". She looked all around very quickly and asked with a true fear 'Where?". Trying not to laugh, I told her that she was in fact the monster. She cocked her little head to one side, put her hands on her hips and sighed before informing me "No. I am not a monster. I. Am. A. Princess." I lost it then and had to turn my laughing into coughing. Her royal highness received a reward for the deposit and I shall have to create a crown for sitting on the throne for next week. Oh yes, I do believe that we are responsible for the monsters in our lives much of the time and that our worst monsters are the (cute, little, irrepresible, never quiet, still sweet) ones that we create.