Trouble With a Capital "S"

Recently, a friend and I were sharing daughter stories, and he mentioned a supposed pattern that I had never heard of. Apparently the type of personality that a girl has at age three is a strong indicator of the personality she will have in her teenage years. If this is indeed true, it is a dire foreshadowing of what we are in for, given what happened later that evening.

I had given Leila some shakers of various sprinkles to take to school for cookie decorating. Sabina wanted to hold one so I absentmindedly gave her one. Surely she won't unscrew the top. I continued with dinner preparation, only to look up mere minutes later to see the top off and a ring of rainbow sprinkles around Sabina's mouth.

"Sabina, we don't open the sprinkles," I said as I took it and put the top back on. "If you open it again, I'll have to take them away from you." And I handed them back to her. I returned to dinner preparation, but out of the corner of my eye, saw her quietly walking around the corner, out of sight. Surely she is just going into the office to find Kevin. She is too young to know how to hide things from me. A minute later, and I hear nothing, no chatting with Daddy, no playing, so I stop to go look for her. Sure enough, she is in the office, with a new ring of sprinkles around her mouth. I reprimanded her again, and I did take the sprinkles away, but I am pretty sure it had little to no effect. She had already succeeded at nearly emptying the container.

Now, we have a few months before she turns three, but I think I will take this as a warning.