Ellie is a Ninja

So lately Ellie has been throwing fits that make you want to ring her neck. She tries to figure out how much she can get away with by saying, "but I really want to" when you tell her she can't do it (what ever "it" is) or when you make her go her room she'll release burts of screaming that make your toes curl.

Our reaction to this has been to try and figure out what it is that we can take away from her that will make her think twice about repeating these acts in the future. One of the things that she is addicted to we'd love to break her of is her blankie that she HAS to have. So we told her that we were going to take away her blanket next time she threw one of those fits.

Last night she was in full force. She was upset about butterflies not being pretty enough or something and burst into action. Kiley went up and talked to her and told her that if she went into her screaming fit that I was going to come up and take her blanket. Nice - not only do i have to be the bad guy, I have to climb the stairs too!

She starts in with the short bursts of screaming and finally I had to go up there and take the blanket. It went over real well [eye roll]. So I came back down and put the blanket on the back of the couch and we went back to watching our movie. She came back out of her room and said she wanted her blanket and we told her she would have to earn it back. Then all was silent. For a long time and I remember thinking, 'man, that was easy. this blanket taking action is the tops!" Then I got up to get something to drink and noticed that the blanket was gone so I asked Kiley if she put it up and she goes, "No, what did you do with it?"

Turns out, Ellie had snuck down the stairs and must have military crawled to the couch to get the thing. The chair I'm in has a pretty open view to the stairs but is blocked by the couch at waist level so she pull off quite a feat. I was half temped to let her keep it for going thru that much trouble then later we'd work on her ninja throwing stars technique but we determined that we'd have to take it back.

Kiley went back up there to get it, spanking spoon in hand and a big ruckus broke out that ended with the blanket in our possession and Ellie with a red mark on her fanny. Kiley really talked to sense into her b/c today she's been bent on earning that thing back. Even her teacher, Miss Karen told me when I picked them up that Ellie was really good today and wanted her to tell us that she's done a good job of earning her blanket back. Funny.