learning no

Caia has become fascinated by the dishwasher. This means that she toddles over to it and presses buttons. And that means that I have been going over many times during the day to set the child lock. For some reason, my dishwasher's child lock can only be set when the dish washer is powered on and it will then shut itself off after a few minutes of not being used. Works great for the times that I'm running a load of dishes but rather impractical otherwise.
Today, instead of walking over and setting the child lock and continuing to let her push the buttons, I used my arm to block her from the buttons and firmly said, "no." She smiled up at me sweetly and turned away from the dishwasher and left it alone for the rest of the day.
Okay, that isn't how it happened. Actually, she screwed up her face in frustration and anger and tried to pull my arm out of the way. After several seconds of this, she realized that I wasn't going to move and threw herself onto my legs in a fit of tears. We had to repeat the whole scene several times and I'm sure we will continue to repeat it. Part of me wants to just put the child lock on because it means I don't have to stand there and it means that she won't cry. But another part of me knows that sooner or later, she will need to learn the word no. She will have to realize that her big blue eyes and dimples won't get her everything she wants and that some things are off-limits. It's not a fun lesson but lessons rarely are.