The Negotiator

A-chan eating a sweet bean mochi.

A-chan will ask me to read a book to her. I will say, 'okay, one book'. She goes to her bookshelf and picks out two books, brings them back. She says, 'mata read two books, okay?' I say, 'no, just one book.' We read one book. Then she grabs the second book and says, 'mata read one book, okay?' and so on. If I agree to one more book after that she says, 'mata read three books.' I say, 'that's right.' thinking that she has been counting the ones that we've already read. A-chan then brings me 3 more books from the shelf.

Ten minutes later A-chan comes and asks, "two pretzels?" I think you can imagine how that one goes. It's gotten up to twelve pretzels...

I can imagine what she will be like at 5 and 16. It scares me. We need to practice saying 'no' every day for at least an hour to start preparing. In multiple languages. Maybe two hours a day. Because we're suckers. That's how we got 17 cats, you know. I need sugar now.