I Don't Want To

Lately, Raelynn's thing has been to tell us "I don't want to..." I have to give her mad props for being grammatically correct when she's speaking, and for expressing herself, but I can't give her any leeway on these.

It started a week or so ago when we were in the car. She wanted to sit on me. In our car, we have a car seat, which is unusual for China. Even though they passed a law stating that people needed to start using car seats for their children, no one pays it any mind. But we're no fools. The only time I hold her on my lap in the car is when we have to take a taxi, but that's not too terribly often. Anyway, she kept insisting on sitting on me but I kept denying her request. And that's when it began.

"I don't want to sit in my seat," she said.
"Well, that's too bad. You have to. It's safe," I told her.
"I don't want to sit in my seat," she said again.
"You must," both Jeremy and I tell her.
"I don't want to sit in my seat. I don't want to sit in my seat. I don't want to sit in my seat. I don't want to sit in my seat."

This went on and on for the duration of the car ride, escalating from statement to shrieking exclamation. Somewhere along Nanjing Road is a large chunk of my sanity.

And now for every car ride, we must endure her complaining. "I don't want to sit in my seat." I have to sit in the back to keep her from weaseling out of the restraints. On the most recent car ride, I decided to film her when Jeremy had stopped off at a vegetable vendor on the side of the road. I started to make a song about it, which you can hear me singing in the backround...

We expect it to go multi-platinum.

We'll be coming out with an album. It will have other great hits on it, such as "I don't want to sleep in my crib." Or how about "I don't want to sit in my tub," a one-time hit tune she came up with when her daddy was at a business dinner and couldn't be home during her nighttime routine.

We also have "I don't want to sit in the van," which was performed live in front of a real audience inside of, you guessed it, a van. It was the van from the play group, which takes the moms and kids down to the main road so we can attempt to flag down a taxi. Otherwise it would be quite a long walk. I'm sure she'd come up with another song, like "I don't want to walk on this street" or something to that effect.

Stay tuned for my own bonus track coming soon. It's called "I don't want to go back to school." Seriously. Why can't they pay me to be on vacation forever? Sigh.