The Mock Dock

So I think I’ve told you that I have this toddler who’s just painfully adorable.  Like, the kind of adorable which compels perfect strangers to comment on his cuteness when we’re out in public.  And I’m not even just saying that because he emerged from my own uterine area.  He is genuinely precious.  BUT, he’s also somehow, at the tender age of 2.5, developed a keenly heightened awareness of his own manipulative powers.

Now, I’d always heard stories that kids could manipulate you.  But I guess I just never thought that kids THIS YOUNG could manipulate you.  But Mini-Mock has got me completely wrapped around his tiny finger.  Here’s what he does.   If I tell him to do something he doesn’t wanna do, he’ll say, “no?” in kind of this hesitant way - like he knows saying no to me is probably not a good idea, but he’s going to test the theory anyway.  So I’ll tell him again, sternly, and he’ll say “NO” a little more forcefully, and then I’ll give him The Look, whereby he knows that trouble is imminent, and then do you know what he does?  He looks at me with his giant saucer-eyes, with his big droopy way-too-long-for-a-boy eyelashes, flashes an impossibly innocent smile and says:

“Mommy - do you want to give me a hug?”

Now I ask you.  How am I expected to maintain any semblance of strictness when faced with such a question?  I MELT.  And he knows this.  And therefore I am doomed to a life of total submission to my son’s every want.

Sigh.