Choosing Battles and Creating Neurosis

I have heard a lot of people use the phrase "chose your battles" but somehow it's my Aunt Jennie Sue's voice I hear when I think of the phrase -- I guess she's said the most often. And it's good advice, but somehow as I find myself choosing my battles, I wonder if Aunt Jennie Sue (and others) meant "choose your battles wisely" because some days (like today), I think I may be choosing them randomly.

Option One: Sydney keeps pulling the rubber bands out of her hair.
Option Two: Sydney hides food.
Option Three: Sydney treats the booth at the restaurant like a jungle gym.

I picked option one today. I don't know. It just drives me batty to have her pull out the pony tails the minute we get in the car to go somewhere. I get her looking all cute and then we arrive at our destination and she's got Einstein hair. I can't let it go. I put her hair back, repeatedly tell her not to touch her pony tails, explain the whole "it's easier to just do your hair once and then you don't have to deal with it being done six times in one day" and all the while I think she thinking, "how cool, I pull out this circle thing and Mama flips out, let's do it again!" Then I think, is this how parents create neurotic children? "No, I can't leave the house without my hair done, I know I'm forty and no one really cares, but for some reason, I feel super anxious at the idea."

Option two went like this: Sydney sometimes likes to eat outside of the high chair. It's like fast food -- you eat, then you play, then you eat some more. We let her do it with Cheerios often, and sometimes she asks to be out of the high chair and then asks for the food to come down with her, and that's when we know she wants to play and eat. Well, today, she had tortellini for lunch and I wouldn't give her the bowl to eat and run with. I just didn't like the idea of finding tortellini two weeks from now in her toys. So, five minutes later, she's eating a tortellini and I just assume it was one she threw on the floor just in case I wouldn't give her the bowl. Not cool, but it's already in her mouth, so whatever. Then she has a second one, and I'm checking the floor and the high chair. There's no tortellini around, so I think her stash has run out. Then I'm sitting in my chair and she walks up to me and I see this bulge in the top of her dress. Yep, an entire half serving of tortellini stashed for later. I laughed so hard I cried. (And then I took the tortellini out of her dress and threw it out. Yuck.) No punishment there -- just amazement at her resourcefulness, and a mental note to check her shirt next time I get her out of the high chair.

Option three: We had dinner at Chili's (just Sydney and me) and they sat us at the tiny booth, so I had my side and she had hers. Turns out that she can push back on the seat, put her feet on the edge of the table and lift up her body. How cool is that? I kept getting her to do it again and again so we could enjoy the newest trick. Because really, it's only a trick you do when you're under three feet tall, so by the time she's all grown up and can do whatever she wants, the whole booth gymnastics will be a thing of the past.

So, choose your battles, indeed. I guess I'm sticking by my battle plan since she now knows that the hair thing matters to me (and it really does), and I am glad that I can let so many others go. But I do hope I'm not making her totally neurotic, and that when she's older and telling someone about how crazy her mother was about the her hair, she'll remember that I let the tortellini and the feet on the table at Chilis go.

Probably not, though.