First conversation

On Monday, Strawberry stayed home with Curly due to a teacher work day at daycare and I did the bedtime routine solo to give her a break.  Positioned behind the “nursing” chair in Curly’s room is our long-neglected elliptical machine.  When I finished reading his last bedtime book and picked him up to head to the crib, he caught sight of it.

Curly pointing: Wahzz-at? (translation: “what is that?”, possibly the first complete sentence from him.)

Nutella: That is an elliptical machine.  The mommies use it to exercise (3 years ago).

Curly: {look of confusion}

Nutella: You know how Mr. Will comes to school and you have Funtastic Fitness?  That’s exercise.  Well the mommies use this to exercise, because Mr Will doesn’t come to our house.  Do you want to touch it?

Curly: Yeah {gently touches the frame of the elliptical}

Nutella: Ok, let’s say good night.

Curly: Night-night.

Protected: The boys are back in town

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Cause you’ve got…personality

For many of the months in his first year of life, if you had asked me (and sometimes people did) what our son’s personality was like, I would have answered (and sometimes did) that he was very Type-A, demanding, sensitive…”spirited” if you will. Surprisingly, though I still agree that he is somewhat sensitive, nowadays I find myself saying he is more passive, distractable, even happy-go-lucky. He is “slow-to-warm-up” which is very similar to how I, the non-bio mom, am, so I totally get it. When confronted with groups of people, he is an observer and it takes a while for him to feel comfortable enough to join in, even when it is a situation with which he is familiar. For example, Ima and I (mommy) brought him into his daycare this morning and noticed all the toddlers were in the 2’s room. So we took off his coat in his empty room and walked over there together. When the kids and teachers saw him enter, they lit up and happily said his name. His reaction was to step backwards, grab my legs and hide his face. A couple minutes later he quietly joined the nearest group of kids to eat his first snack.

He is good-humored and easy to make laugh. He is also innocent and unfortunately naive (as far as a nearly 2 year old can be). This means he takes no precaution when The Biter in his class approaches him, ready to attack (although sometimes he honestly doesn’t see her coming). So when we were notified that he was bitten for the 5th time last week, we were not only frustrated with The Biter, but also with him for not protecting himself a little better. Not that he should have to of course, but we do think he would benefit from not being quite so trusting sometimes.

While meeting with his teachers to discuss The Biter, we touched a little upon that. Sometimes when they sit for circle time, another kid nearby may kick at his feet and instead of getting up or telling that child ‘No’, he will simply sit there and take it and sadly look to a teacher for help. While we are delighted that he is generally not aggressive, it does hurt to think that your child may be an easy target for bullies. Luckily the teachers suggest ways for him to cope without always rescuing him, and we’ll try to work on that as well (although short of sticking our fingers in his ears waiting for him to tell us to stop or push our hands away, we’re not entirely sure what to do, nor do we want to lessen his trust in us as his parents).

All this to say:

1. Your toddler may be very different from your baby personality-wise
2. The Biter is still a problem at our daycare and this apparently will not stop until she can control herself because they have no real policy in place except to keep trying new tactics
3. Curly needs to learn how to better stand up for himself
4. Curly is not yet able to say “Lay off, bitch!”

The Age of No

Somewhere during his 21st month, Curly learned that it was in his control to say the word ‘No’ and make a point. So he began to do it very often. They aren’t kidding when they say with toddlers, everything is ‘No.’ Even when it’s ‘Yes.’ Case in point: “Do you want your milk?” “No” (while taking the milk). “Are you hungry?” “No” (and one minute later he begs to eat) “Did you poop?” “No” (oh yes he did)

Of course, sometimes the answer really is “No” and we have no problem with him asserting his independence through the use of that word, but we’d rather not hear it 80 times a day thank you very much. Starting to emerge is “Yeah” and a positive nodding of the head. Those are far and few between, but lovely to see. Hopefully one day it’ll be a 50/50 split.

I am also posting to say that a remote-controlled car is a really excellent toy for a youngin. We purchased one  for 2+ years when he was 20 months old and it never fails to amuse. He locks his eyes on it and just stares when I, or Nutella, are in control. Sometimes we give him the remote, and while he loves pushing the buttons, it seems he doesn’t quite get the fact that it actually controls the little car. So he’ll hold the remote and tell one of us to give it a push. Funny.