Thursday, August 21, 2008

Singing in the Rain

There was no rain and no dancing. But there's an umbrella, a little singing and plenty of reasons to smile.

the lazy days of August are here...





Holy crap, an entire summer seems to have flown by and I haven’t written a thing. Well, I’ve written grocery lists, I’ve written in my journal, I’ve written the kid’s names on about a hundred art projects that I somehow manage to recycle once a week (even if N says we need to save them all). But, I haven’t written here.

I have a bunch of excuses 1. It was summer, 2. I’ve got two kids to chase around the house 3. I had out of town guests 4. It was summer 5. I had emergency surgery and 6. Yep, you guessed it, it was summer. Let’s face it, this time of year is not meant for mining the depths of one’s brain and now it’s the lazy days of August and it’s even harder, but I figured I owed it to my 6 readers and maybe even myself to try and get something out there. Just so we’d all know I was still here.

Summer with a 3 year old and an under two year old can be joyous and frustrating. It can be rewarding and exasperating. In other words summer is no different then the rest of the year, it’s just that during the summer we can all go outside and feel like we have a little space to move and fly.

N loves to take off running down the sidewalk at a neck breaking speed these days. While I secretly love the fact that he is so fast and so brave it also makes me nutty. He often forgets to tell us where he is going. And that’s just not cool, because he’s three and one wrong turn around the corner and who knows what could happen. I’m not talking crazy boogie man get the boy kind of stuff (although I do think about that too) no, just your generic getting lost, or falling down and really getting hurt. So, there’s been a lot of tears and timeouts while N tries to reconcile the world of personal freedom and the rules of Mom and Dad.

When N is sitting in said timeout L will often pat him on the back and say, “ahhh”. Then the other day I saw her sitting in the timeout spot sort of fake crying, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. So, I called her over and gave her a hug, she seemed happy and we moved on. But, then it happened again and again. It dawned on me, she was doing what her brother does. (She loves to do Everything that N does) Right down to getting the hug when she came out of the corner (N always gets a hug and an “I love you” after said timeout and a discussion of why he was there) Once I realized what she was doing I just left her there and laughed. Little does she know that someday that will no longer be a fun thing to do.

For those tracking the arc of N’s potty training, we are at a plateau. He’ll go when asked, sometimes, and still won’t initiate anything. We’ve resorted to bribery and he is rewarded with mini M&M’ s for each sucessfull attempt. Of course, since he’s three sometimes even the bribery is useless. “Let’s try for a couple of M&M’s”, I’ll say. “I don’t want any” he’ll respond. Then it’s like pulling teeth to get him to interupt whatever it is that is so important to go sit on the potty. Nothing can convince him that taking the time to go potty is actually less time consuming and stressful then having to stop and change wet clothes.... sigh... maybe his new daycare provider can help us win this battle.

Meanwhile L, the copycat, toddles into the bathroom attempts to pull off her pants, sits on the potty chair for a couple of minutes and then stands up with great joy and says “Potty” or “ta-da” at the top of her lungs.
Kids, go figure.

Note: While I realize that most of my readers know my children’s names and I have actually used them in earlier blogs, I have decided to use their initials from now on. Why, you might ask? Because someday they are going to be old enough to care about me writing about them. Someday they’ll have friends who might google them. So, this is the first baby step towards the day when N & L ask me to stop writing about them all together. Luckily for you and me, that day is hopefully a ways off still!

‘Til next time, take care.