the negotiator

Have I mentioned lately that I'm pretty sure my charming, delightful daughter is so going to be a diplomat or lawyer when she grows up?

OK... she's not quite 3, so maybe it's a little early to start making predictions of this nature (at 4, I wanted to be the first artist in space... don't you think modern art from the moon would just sell like hotcakes?). That being said, let me explain her aptitudes and skills at this ripe age:

1) Generally speaking (and I'm doing my best to not say this from a "she's my kid and I'm inherently biased" position), she's a charming little ham. I cannot remember the last time we went to the store when I didn't get some comment about, "well, isn't she smart as a whip/cute as a button/a little pistol/adorable/some variation thereof".
2) She has no natural fear of others. Perhaps this is because we tried very hard to help her be comfortable in a variety of social settings from infancy onward... so in retrospect, I may indeed have created a monster. But she is completely comfortable going up to a stranger, or the police officer who pulled me over Friday night, and saying, "This is my mommy. Her name's Sarah. You be nice to my mommy."
3) The child has a memory like a bear trap. I (feebly) attempted to bribe her to take a nap yesterday with the promise of the park afterward. Shouldn't the nap erase that memory? Nuh-uh. She held me to it like it was a biblical covenant.
4) She has the uncanny ability to negotiate by simply throwing the rules of logic out the window and being terrifically persistent. For instance, right now Paige gets a dum-dum sucker everytime she USES (not just attempts) the potty (yes, my life has been reduced to the lowest-common-denominator). Yesterday afternoon, she attempted to reason with me that IF she got the dum-dum sucker first, she would FOR SURE use the big girl potty. And persisted along this line of argument for about 20 minutes (which is more than the attention span she has for most cartoons.)

My greatest acheivement -- and the thing I will probably look back and beat my head on the wall for when she's 14 -- is raising an independent thinker who relentlessly pursues her goals.

On the bright side, only 15 more years til college... (at which time I'll just be crossing my fingers and worrying).