This past Sunday marked yet another week of taking our sweet soon-to-be-two-year old to church. A ritual we’ve done since the week she was born. And until the last few months, has been a relatively simple process. As she enters the second year of her life, she has a new-found fun time at church. Mainly torturing her parents.

Last weekend Baylor was frustrated, hot and bored. In an effort to get my attention and thus relocated to the much more interesting and fun vestibule of the church, she attempted to head butt me. I gave her the mom stare trying to telepathically tell her “knock it off” when she went for a second shot. I’m quite sure that she knew that my usual response to a head butt is a head butt – which I obviously do gently and in a “I’m going to show you that this hurts” teaching kind of way. However, when someone sees you head butt your child, they tend to frown on that. Especially in a place of worship. Therefore my little Einstein knew if she threw her noggin at mine, she was probably A. going to get away with it and B. get to go to the vestibule.  And she was right.

So instead of a demerit system and empty threats, we tried a reward system. If Baylor was quiet, we would quietly thank her for being silent and then give her a yogurt raisin (her favorite). Brilliant? Maybe. But worth a shot none the less. I have to say that it did work, until about a half hour in. The little stinker caught on and then started making noise in order to be shushed and then she knew she got a raisin for being quiet. She’s either going to be president or live in a secluded cabin somewhere running a blog that plots to take over the world.

The one redeeming quality is she’s really stinking cute and I am always sure to dress her equally as adorable. Mostly because I think people are more tolerant of cute kids.