Our playdate this morning went well. Despite the part about how she needed a nap because I'm a mean mama and won't let her sleep. This is the hard part about shifting her sleep cycle two hours- to keep her up just a little later every night so that she wakes up just a little later every morning and naps in the afternoon after lunch and not before. Is this for my convenience? Not as much as it's going to help her self-soothe. Which is going to help her learn limits. Which, in the long run, is going to give us a mother-child foundation of Who's the Mama. It'll give me self-confidence in setting the rules, and give her limits to her world and if she learns that Mama won't let her go to bed at 4 and wake up 12 hours later to play then it may just be easier to keep her from playing in traffic or running with scissors. I hold out no hope that it will convince her potatoes are not a vegetable, or that she really can put the book down before she gets to the end of the next chapter.

That's genetic. It's not teachable. But I have hope that I'll not lose the parenting struggle at this point.