Laundry and Attatchment

I think one of the most interesting things about Princess is how she heals INSIDE a regression. I hate regressing. I think I hate it more than canned beans, even. It exhausts me. It's more frustrating each time it happens. But interesting, it is.

We've had two days this week (in a row!) of relatively compliant behavior, and even when things don't go her way (ie. her purse getting a time-out for allowing itself to be used as a weapon), she screeches for a minute and then regroups. I have some more flexibility with her. She's done her homework three days in a row!

But the interesting thing happened yesterday afternoon. Typically, she will do something in the most difficult and time-consuming way possible JUST SO it looks nothing like the way I do it. So one of the problems with her laundry has been that she turns it inside-out about four different ways when she takes it off, washes it, then has to un-knot it so it gets dry in the dryer. Takes her about 30 minutes. Seriously. Yesterday, though, yesterday I said, "Princess, you have laundry that needs to go in the dryer. Would you like to put it there, or would you like me to do it and then you can pay me back by washing the kitchen floor?" She chose laundry (for the first time in two weeks), and was done in about three minutes. She said:

"I untangled it before I put it in. Like you do. Because you don't have to spend a lot of time on it because you do it that way."

AAAAAAAAAAAH! I about fell over and hit my head on the dryer sheets. Doing something efficiently AND trying to be like me? At the same time? Unprecedented!