A recent (abridged) conversation over lots of screaming & tears while trying to leave the house in the morning: Me: "Larson, would you like to put your shoes on, or would you like me to do it?"
Larson: "I want to do it!"
Me: "Ok, then, please put them on."
(L continues to play with truck)
Me: "Ok, well, if you're not going to do it, then I will."
Larson: "NO!!!!! I WANT TO DO IT MYSELF!"
(a couple more rounds of this...)
Me: "Ok, then please do it yourself or I'm going to pick you up and put you in the car without your shoes on."
(L plays with shoes, but doesn't put them on)
Me: "Alright, Larson, you're not listening. We're going in the car."
(LOTS of screaming as I pick him up, carry him to the car and practically sit on him to get the car seat buckled)
Sound familiar to anyone? I realized many months ago that negotiating with a toddler is pretty much a dead end and not really somewhere I want to go anymore. Fun times are not had by anyone. However, I'm not perfect and sometimes find myself doing it despite my best efforts. But really, who is in charge here? It's definitely not the 2 year old! I have to laugh at how commonly the toddler seems to rule the family. Sometimes I feel that actually having rules makes me the odd parent out, if you will. I was recently at a birthday party for one of Larson's friends and gave him the one minute warning (aka: time to leave soon). Another parent looked at me and said, "Yeah, right!" It took me a second before I realized what he meant was that it was a given that Larson wouldn't listen to me. I must have looked confused before I said, "well, actually, he knows that when the minute is up, I'll just pick him up and put him in the car, so yes, he probably will listen to me!" The look on this guy's face was quite entertaining, as if the idea had never occurred to him...
A woman at work told me this week that she read a study by the phone companies stating kids in college call their parents as many as 6-8 times a day. A day? I didn't even call my parents that many times in a week! My sister told me about a recent article in Business Week about business schools noting the increasing presence of parents in the application process. Whoa. This is a whole new level of the parent-teacher conference. What is going on here? Why are we so focused on pampering and spoiling our kids so that they will never encounter anything unpleasant in life? So they never experience frustration, disappointment, feeling "deprived"? Is that actually a good thing?
Granted, these situations are actually not that common in our house but regardless, do I like hearing all that screaming and crying? No, I hate it. It's definitely not the easy way out in the moment. But would I rather have Larson scream for 15 minutes because I made him get in the car/go to bed/sit at the table to have a snack, than have him grow up thinking that the world revolves around him and what he wants? Definitely.
All the above photos were taken last weekend at our local firehouse's "open house", where kids had free rein to climb all over the trucks. Very cool!
I just love watching these two little guys with their developing personalities and skills. The time is so precious because I know I will blink and they will be leaving the nest soon enough. Here's Larson hard at work in his new playspace that he and dad worked on a couple weeks ago. We've had to get creative in our tiny house as our family has expanded, but at least it gives us an excuse to control the amount of stuff we have!
Our Halloween festivities basically consisted of a boisterous party at Larson's school, then pumpkin carving at home with the family. It was really fun to see how changed Larson was this year compared to last at the same party. Last Halloween he really didn't have much of an idea about what was really going on and many of the activities and games they had were over his head. This year he could kind of do his own thing, with supervision from a few feet back as he made the rounds. My baby is growing up!
Enter Grandma to help out while he was gone (thank goodness!). She got to meet Cora for the first time and was a big help with both little ones. We ladies held down the fort just fine, thank you very much...
Our October would not have been complete without a trip to the pumpkin patch. We chose a different farm this year, and really enjoyed our trip. Just like our drive last year to pumpkin-land, we left on a very foggy morning and it was just so beautiful to be out in the fields as the fog burned off. A little cold, though, as you can see from Larson's bundling up. It didn't really occur to me to check the weather where we were actually going, instead of just in our neighborhood :)
The highlight of the entire outing for Larson was undoubtably the GREEN tractors that pulled the hay wagons. Picking a pumpkin was definitely secondary! Note the green pumpkin carefully selected by him at the farm. Our neighbors across the street joked with us that they knew which pumpkin on our balcony was Larson's and were chuckling to themselves as they watched it get more and more orange (and less and less green) every day.
The following weekend (still sans dad) was my first back on call, so more reinforcements (ie, Grandpa) were flown in. Everyone rose to the occasion wonderfully and we got through the weekend quite smoothly. Larson got to go "trick or treating" in our neighborhood downtown (for some reason they do it the weekend before Halloween) and his Grandma was very proud to report to me that he said "Thank You" unprompted to every person who gave him a treat. That's my guy!
