Fingernails on toddlers need attention almost daily, but a good trim is necessary every single week. Yesterday marked one week since they’d been cut and so we embarked on the ritual. Piper tends to freak out about the entire process every time, usually by pulling away or screaming or yelling about how it tickles her, unless my father is the one with the clippers. Then she is perfectly calm and fine. He has some kind of magical power over her. If he would sell it to me, I would pay through the nose for it.
When you are just starting out in the parenting business you make all of these grandiose statements about how you will never ever do this or do that. You won’t be like all those other shmuck adults who do stuff like bribe their children. Bribery? Forget that! They’ll just do as I say! As soon as I say it! Every time!
And then you meet your child and discover that they are a human being and not a robot and that sometimes their idea of what should be happening is very very different than yours and no matter what grade you received on those persuasive speeches you gave in college, you will not be able to convince them to come over to your side. You’ll be Darth Vader. They’ll be Luke. And you’ll eventually have to cut off their hands.
Er.
So, fingernail polish is a wonderful bribe motivator for Piper. ‘Do you want your nails to be pink? Okay, then you have to sit still while I cut them and then we can paint them too!’ She suddenly turns into Kim Cattrall circa 1987. I start clipping. And then one of those tiny little devils flips right into my eye. I thought it popped out. Didn’t have any trouble at all with it. Got her toes done too. Broke out the polish. The pretty pink I like the most. And we painted:
She showed my mom their loveliness over Skype. She showed Jud their pretty pink at supper. And then she went to bed. Happy about her day playing outside and having pink nails sticking out of her sandals.
And then, eventually, I went to bed too and closed my eye. And nearly screamed. It was IN THERE. STILL. I had Jud turn on the light and hold my eye open the way he does when one of his contacts flips in on itself and then rolls up into his eyelid. He could see the tiny fingernail but he couldn’t get it. My eye watered. It was moving around, scratching the fire out of my eye. Jud grabbed his contact solution and started irrigating my eye. Down came the little nail. He could fish it out easily then, a little crescent moon of awful. I’ll be filing my workman’s comp claim any minute now.
OUCH! My eye hurts just from reading that.
Thank you for the sympathy pain! It’s feeling quite a bit better now, but Jud says to wait until tomorrow. He is kind of foreboding.
Oh my word! That would be so painful. I totally know what you mean about kids hating getting them cut. Rachel hates getting hers cut!
You have a few more nails to cut than me these days! How do you deal with her hate?