miss independent

i have a theory that a child cannot escape the Terrible Two's without going through, and thereby succumbing their entire family to, the Independent Stage. liam went through it for a brief period, when he stubbornly resisted any help, but thankfully it passed quickly. susanna, on the other hand ... well, susanna is in a category all her own. for months now, she's been determined to do everything by herself, even when, most of the time, it's nearly impossible for her to do so. "DO IT MYSELF!" she mutters, as she tries to haul a bag of groceries up the steps. or to wash her hands when she can't even reach the sink on her tippy-toes. or to button her coat with mittens on. or to tie her shoes. of course, we always encourage her to follow through with her attempts, since the only way she's going to learn is from her mistakes -- and isn't one of our primary parenting goals to raise independent children? so we quickly learned to factor in additional time for even the most mundane tasks, because her way takes twice as long as if we did it for her. it's painfully fun (emphasis on the "painful") when it's below freezing outside, as her 35-pound body (stuffed like a sausage into her winter coat, mind you) insists on opening the door of our SUV herself and then scaling her car seat four feet off the ground herself and then fastening the buckle herself. start to finish time for said independent task: four minutes. (as opposed to parent-assisted time of ten seconds.) these are just a few of the daily occurrences we endure with our beloved second child. but nothing has quite compared to last night. she had climbed into liam's bed to give him a good night kiss, and as it was really late, i picked her up and carried her into her room for our bedtime ritual of rocking to "oh susanna". she kicked and screamed the entire way across the hall, and as soon as i had put her down, she gave me a defiant look and marched out. thirty seconds later, she was back, with a sweet smile on her face as she got into my lap. something had obviously happened in the interim to satisfy her, but i wasn't sure what. chris told me later how it had all unfolded. apparently she had returned to liam's room and beelined it to his bed. she climbed up, and then immediately, climbed right back down. dumb me! her hissy fit wasn't because she wanted to stay longer and read more stories. and it wasn't because she didn't get a kiss from her big brother. no, the grave error i had made was taking her out of the bed when -- shocker -- she wanted to do it herself. the phrase "fiercely independent" comes to mind. emphasis on the "fierce".