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Jason Good has a blog post about reasons his 3 year old is flipping out, and it’s pretty funny. It digs right into just how irrational little kids are, how confusing and overwhelming the world can be for them and how confusing and overwhelming they can be for their parents/caregivers. I like his blog. He’s obviously an involved and loving parent who knows his kids well and is able to put a humorous yet understanding spin on daily life. So when I first saw links to a tumblr about why a kid is crying I assumed it was a link to his site. It wasn’t. Instead, it’s a collection of photos of a crying 2 or 3 year old with a caption as to why he’s crying. The kid cries a lot, apparently. And the kid’s parent takes time to photograph the kid while crying and note down why he’s crying (milk’s in the wrong color cup, a piece of cheese is the wrong shape, etc). There’s a lot of people who think it’s really funny.

I don’t.

It’s really, really hard being a kid– especially a young kid. A really little kid flips out when his cheese is the wrong shape or her milk’s in the wrong cup because 1) that means it’s just plain WRONG and/or 2) that’s one thing in a huge world they have control over and now they’ve lost that control. Good’s blog post feels empathic. It reads as a guy who understands that it’s hard to be a little kid, and that it can be frustrating to be the parent of a little kid, but if you step back you can see the humor in the situation. The tumblr feels… I don’t know. My mind lights on words like “cruel” and “predatory” but I don’t think that’s quite it. Friends of mine suggest it’s something that was designed to go viral and sure enough, the creator and his family were on TV concerning it. But what’s the difference between Good’s blog post and the tumblr?

I think the biggest thing is that Good put in effort after the fact to list reasons his kid was flipping out and the sheer number, and ridiculousness of them, builds and is funny. And a lot of stuff he talks about were things he was doing with his kid, interacting with his kid. The tumblr is quick snapshots of a kid that already looks stressed out accompanied by one-sentence descriptions. It feels like the tumblr author prioritizes taking a photo of his kid in crises to helping his kid in crises solve the problem. Good talks about his kid, the tumblr author complains about his kid.

And, you know, sometimes parents and caregivers need to vent. Kids can be frustrating, challenging, hard work. And when parents and caregivers complain they’re frequently abused for doing so, especially if they’re women. (In fact, one friend of mine asked if the tumblr would be as popular if it were a mom writing it; dads get way more leeway to be less than saints. I think it’d fly as long as she was white, affluent, and joked about how much wine she drinks. Several “mommybloggers” fitting that description landed book deals based on their HILARZ discussions of alcoholic parenting, then checked into rehab. That really wouldn’t have worked for them if they weren’t a certain type.) So I’m all for finding and creating safe spaces to vent, to unload, to ask for help. But that really doesn’t feel like it’s what’s happening.

In my experience, which is fairly limited to my own relatively laid back 4 year old and some babysitting (age ranges from 1 1/2-7 years old) most freak outs can be nipped in the bud by remembering HALT. Is the kid Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? If your kid (or adult) starts getting on edge and acting brittle, look at the circumstances. When did they last eat? Do they need to calm down and sleep? Do they need attention? Are they angry/frustrated and need to express that and then calm down before proceeding? For really little kids, also check to see if they need to use the bathroom or are generally over whelmed. Being mindful of your kid’s needs can go a long way toward creating a smoother life for everyone involved. This isn’t some magic bullet that will solve all your problems, obviously.

It’s also important to remember that little kids don’t have adult brains. If they ask for a piece of cheese and you give them the “wrong” shape of cheese? That is not what they asked for. Until they make certain synaptic connections, they cannot translate that. It’s not possible. Their brains are growing, and they aren’t just increasing in size they’re increasing connections and the ability to make deductions. They have very little control over their lives, so cling to what they CAN control: what color cup they use, what shirt they wear. They are just learning new skills and get frustrated easily because what they WANT to do is so much harder than it should be because they are still learning how to do it. When little kids flip out, it’s because they can’t cope with the world at the moment. Part of maturing is learning to cope with it, even when frustrating… and part of parenting is teaching kids how to cope with a frustrating world.

Or you could take photos of your sobbing child and post it to tumblr, I guess.

It’s hard being a kid. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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A few months ago, Nesko and I were worried and upset. Why was our child acting like an out of control jackass? Was it something we were/weren’t doing? Was this a major personality change? My MIL returned to beating the drum of “it’s his medication’s fault” (he takes an oral medication for his asthma every night) but she blames everything on that. I fretted to a friend of mine who doesn’t have kids but who nannied for several different families while in college.

I keep telling you, Brig. Little kids are psychos.

She is full of wisdom!

The best part of getting advice from someone like her, someone who’s raised kids but isn’t a parent, is that she isn’t as emotionally invested in her advice because 1) they aren’t HER kids and 2) she’s worked for a bunch of different families and seen just how different kids are. So she can be all “well, this worked this time and that worked another time, your situation reminds me of this other thing” and I get a range of advice instead of “THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE DID WITH OUR CHILD AND HE’S PERFECT SO IF IT DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU IDEK YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.”

Anyway, apparently kids who are 3 1/2 go through this stage where they turn into horrific beasts and EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE and they challenge everything and “forget” all rules and sometimes start crapping their pants again even if they’ve been potty trained for a year because HA HA HA WHY NOT, SUCKER.

So we battened down the hatches and set boundaries and enforced rules gently but firmly and remembered to give him extra time for transitions, and… I realized the other day that I no longer want to find a nice family of wolves to take over raising my child. He’s back to being delightful and charming.

It’s not perfect, he’s back to sleeping in our bed which I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE. But at least he’s sleeping now and not waking up constantly screaming about how lonely he is… or just plain screaming. His actual hand to god real nightmares and night terrors have been completely gone since he started sleeping with us again, poor duck. So in theory I should be more rested. But in actuality he pushes me to the edge of the bed and is a very active sleeper, hitting and kick and working his cold feet under my body to scrape his toenails along my torso/crotch. If I put my back to him he hooks his toes into my butt like he’s a tow truck trying to haul me out of a ditch. It’s weird, man! Toes don’t go there!

But this too shall pass. He won’t be in our bed forever.

He’ll either grow out of this, too, or I’ll look up that nice wolf family I had my eye on. There’s some coyotes in the area. You think they’d take him in?

This too shall pass is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

Technorati Tags: 4 year old, parenting, sleep, toddler

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SO.

The child I had surgically removed from my body an eon ago is now FOUR.

We decided to celebrate. I invited way more people than our apartment could comfortably hold and decided on a space theme since Niko is super into the idea of aliens and space exploration right now. Or he was. He quickly vetoed that and wanted OMG TRAINS. He’s still into Thomas and decided that Gordon would be his special birthday friend because Gordon is number 4 and Niko is 4. So I bought some Thomas invitations and we were set.

I set the time of the party for 1:00-4:00 because then we wouldn’t have to provide lunch or dinner, but then I went and blew literally $100.00 on snack-type food (crackers, cheese, crudites, dip, hummus). My MIL brought over her Pita (not the puffed up flat bread, but layered phyllo dough and cheese, or cheese and spinach, or meat, etc. If you’ve had spanikopita (note that pita in there) it’s similar to that but in a log or coiled or round) which was A-MAZE-ING.

I had big plans to spend the week before the party deep cleaning and organizing and getting everything awesome so the week OF the party I’d just have to tidy and maintain. Then I got super sick and spent that week horking out brown slime and complaining about how I wished I was dead, so none of that got done. And the house didn’t get fully cleaned. But I kind of stopped caring.

This was one of our decoration inspirations:

I handed the job over to Nesko while I frosted the cake THE MORNING OF THE PARTY because REASONS that were outside of my control. I also made a zillion cookies… a bunch of tiny engines covered in different colored sugars, and also larger cookies in the shape of an engine, coal tender (I put non pareils on top to be “coal”), a coach, and a caboose. Niko loved them and ate them like this: “oh hey train I’M GONNA EAT YOUR COUPLING NOW! nom nom nom NOW I EAT ALL OF YOU!!”

When he was done, it looked like this:

Well, actually, we hung a bit more crepe paper in swags on the front, but didn’t take any photos of that. I wanted more balloons all over the top but the balloons kept falling down. Nesko couldn’t figure out how to get them to stay up. Was our tape bad? Greasy walls? I have no idea.

Here’s the cake!

Gordon is a splendid blue engine with red detail. His number is yellow and outlined in red. So I carried that over to the cake. I was going to do a red circle around the cake but then decided not to risk shaky hands and a lopsided circle so I didn’t. I also didn’t level the cake so that red ruffle is hiding gaps in the frosting between the two layers. Niko said he wanted strawberry cake. This was a lie.

My camera is a piece of junk, a point and shoot that takes FOREVER to actually take the photo once you’ve hit the button, and which takes a long time to recover from taking photos. My friend Waldo, who is a photographer, used it and managed to get some good photos despite the limitations of the tool she was using.

I made 12 chocolate cupcakes, 12 strawberry cupcakes (as requested), and the cake is a layer of chocolate and a layer of strawberry. If I hadn’t been doing the “4″ thing on the cake I would have just made cupcakes. They are way easier to serve and eat then slabs of cake. We also picked up ice cream bars so we didn’t have to deal with dishing out scoops of ice cream, but then forgot about them. Uh. Duh. We currently have 10 strawberry cupcakes left over.

Some of the other kids “helped” Niko open his presents, for varying values of the word “help.” Everything he got was super thoughtful and something he absolutely enjoys. He got a bunch of books which was kind of a problem because he wanted to stop everything and read them. Presents? Who cares about presents? BOOKS.

Leah made this hat for Niko and I’m hoping that if I am really really nice she’ll make one for me too.

It was a really great time. Some friends were able to come in from out of town, we had some pretty good food even though I didn’t really cook anything.

I think next year I might have a party that’s just kids and make some pizza or something, and then have our adult friends come over the next day for some board games and happy birthday wishes and leftover cake. It was just too many people in our house and it got a little over whelming. It was SUCH a great time, though.

Nikola is four. FOUR. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Niko’s been having a hard time lately.

He’s been really wild and out of control, ignoring us quite a bit, temper tantrumming, insisting on sleeping with us, speaking in a baby voice/refusing to speak and just pointing at things, and having pants accidents. The kid who’s been potty trained for MONTHS is suddenly soiling himself. It was a pretty big, and worrisome, regression. He’s also been refusing to try to do things like look at letters, count, etc. This is the kind of stuff kids do when there’s something huge and new in their lives: when they move, when their parents divorce, when there’s a new baby, when zombies attack, etc. But nothing is going on!

Last night I sat with Niko as he sobbed and cried, after over an hour of walking him (or carrying him) and his pillow back to his own bed. I told him it was time to sleep. His brain needed sleep. His body needed sleep. He sobbed out that he didn’t WANT to grow up.

Well.

Let’s look at that, shall we?

I asked him some more questions. Why doesn’t he want to grow up? Is he afraid of growing up?

He told me that he didn’t want to grow up because that means I’d go away and he doesn’t want me to go away ever and leave him all alone.

Oh, sweet child.

So we cuddled and we talked about growing up and parents and how mamas and tatas always love their kids and we talked about how Nesko and I are still close to our parents. We love them and they love us. He calmed down and fell asleep and slept soundly in his bed all night.

This morning we had another talk about growing up and I reassured him that growing up is a gradual process. You don’t just wake up one day grown up, it takes a long time. We talked about how long it would take. He demanded to know an exact age when one is grown up and I told him 25. I promised him that I would always love him and would always be his mama. He said he didn’t want to have kids instead of a mama. I told him he could have kids AND have a mama, and I would be his kids’ baba, but that he didn’t have to have kids if he didn’t want to. He could choose not to have kids. He said he wanted to choose to have kids and also have a mama. He told me that he wanted to be a mama and have kids.

IF YOU ARE CURIOUS: the difference between a mama and a tata is tatas have DEEP VOICES and mamas have high voices. He demonstrated for me, including doing a pretty spot on impersonation of Nesko.

He’s been a little less clingy so far today, although the day is still young. We’ll see how he does tonight. I’m really tired of him joining us in bed. He pulls my hair and tries to push me out of bed. He jams his feet up under he and scrapes his toenails along my body. I hate it. I HATE IT. So hopefully he’ll sleep in his own little bed tonight.

IRONICALLY a few days ago he got super pissed and fired me, told me I wasn’t his mama anymore and I needed to go away and find a new home because a new mama was coming to our home. I told him I’d wait until his new mama got here. “NO DON’T DO THAT” he said. “YOU WILL BE HERE FOREVER. YOU WILL NEVER GO AWAY.” My firing offense? Not letting him eat candy for breakfast. WORST. MAMA. EVER. Later that day he forgave me and rehired me, though. And, yes, this current behavior regression predates this event.

Oh well that explains that. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

Technorati Tags: 3 years old, parenting

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Niko was running back and forth through the house the other day, screaming and barking, while Nesko and I finished dinner. Then there was a big crash in the living room. We called him in to find out what he’d been doing.

“Well, Delilah–”

I’m going to break in for a moment here and explain something.

Delilah is a stuffed animal.

Delilah is a stuffed dog with curly fur and floppy ears.

“Well, Delilah was chasing me and barking and then I was chasing her and yelling and then she was chasing me and barking and then I was chasing her and yelling and then she ran into the living room and said she was going to dump my balls all over the floor and I said NO DELILAH DON’T DO THAT, THAT’S NAUGHTY and then she dumped all my balls on the floor and I stood there and I said HOLY CRAP–”

We interrupted him at this point, to laugh.

I tried to keep a straight face. I did! I swear. But then I saw Nesko trying to keep a straight face too and I lost it. I kept dissolving into snickers.

“And then I said NO DELILAH THAT WAS NAUGHTY and she chased me into the kitchen and what’s so funny?”

“No, nothing. Nothing’s funny.”

“Is it because I said HOLY CRAP?”

“Noooo… Tata told me a joke and I’m laughing at that.”

He insisted on hearing the joke, Nesko told him a knock knock joke, and then Niko resumed running through the house arguing with Delilah. Yes, arguing. Taking both sides.

Holy crap.

“Holy Crap!” is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Niko, like me, grows hair and nails super fast. So we trim his nails frequently or else he claws us up, and we cut his hair and then like two days later he looks like wolves have been raising him. He was fretting over being “chupo chupovee” (a hairy man) recently and kept asking for a haircut. At one point I went into the bathroom and someone had removed the bathmat (draping it over the garbage can in the kitchen) and put Niko’s little pink chair in the middle of the floor. WHO COULD HAVE DONE THAT. Why, Niko, of course! Preparing for his haircut. So Nesko finally took him in there and trimmed his hair. I tried to slip in there to use the toilet and the floor was entirely covered in hair and Niko was shirtless and I pretty much had a glimpse of what he will look like when he is 40: a dude with a hair sweater. It’s your destiny, dude. Sorry. Or maybe you’ll like being super hairy and bask in the glory of never being fully naked even when unclothed, I don’t know.

Nesko’s gotten pretty good at cutting Niko’s hair, but the problem remains that Niko has my hairline. Namely, his hairline almost reaches his eyebrows near the temples. It’s the opposite of Nesko’s hairline, which is very high up, giving him a smooth high intelligent looking forehead, as opposed to my brutish almost Neanderthal look. It’s like I married a dolphin, y’all. And Niko very obviously takes after me. I expect his unibrow will start coming in when he’s 12 or so.

Anyway, he’s all groomed now and looks like a tiny human and not a feral beast child, so that’s a great change. Unfortunately, he’s still acting like a feral beast child roughly half the time. It’s less than ideal.

Niko’s been requesting a haircut is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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A few weeks ago we were at Target and I told Nesko to buy a shelf to go over the key hooks by the front door to hold his wallet, comb, coins, receipts, knife, and other pocket stuff that tends to get scattered around OR clutter up the dining room table. He picked up a 3-pack of different sized shelves, figuring the other shelves could go someplace else. We got home, just the two of us, Niko at Baba’s and Djedo’s, and he put the shelf up. We decided to put the other two shelves up in Niko’s room, next to his bed. We put one right next to his bed to hold his night time cup of water, and the other slightly above to hold his dried gourd, little metal cars, books, or whatever else he wanted. We did some other things around the house and then got ready to visit some family members for their Slava. We swung by to pick up Niko and told him there was a surprise at home. He was upset with us, reminded us that we were going someplace else and NOT HOME, IT WAS NOT TIME TO GO HOME YET and we said yes yes yes but when we DO get home there’s a surprise!

We had a really good time at the Slava and as usual headed home much later than we should have. We hauled Niko into his bedroom to show him the shelves. Surprise, we said! He looked around. Aw hey, shelves! Neat! So… what’s the surprise? The shelves, we said. That’s the surprise. Surprise! Shelves!

This was not good enough.

He insisted that it was NOT a surprise and he’d SHOW US the surprise. He told us to follow him while he lead us to the surprise and he stomped into the living room. There was no fantastic train set or pile of pirate gold or mountain of pie or whatever the hell he was expecting and he just collapsed emotionally. Nesko wrangled him into bed, showed him how he could put his water on the little shelf and pointed out how his gourd was safe on the bigger shelf, etc.

By the next morning, Niko cheerfully informed us that Clover (one of his stuffed animals) really liked the shelves. When pressed, he admitted that he liked them also.

But there was a problem.

There’s always a problem, right?

The lower shelf was lose. It turned out there was something inside the wall (a small brick chimney? A vein of lead? WHO CAN SAY) that could not be drilled into, so the shelf could not be securely attached to the wall with screws and anchors. So Nesko busted out the command strips and velcroed the fucker to the wall.

He and I both had talks with Niko about not pulling on the shelves or climbing on the shelves, etc. Niko, at one point, was eager to tell me how tata had fixed the smaller shelf and ripped it off the wall with a flourish TADA! and I had another talk with him about Not Doing That.

And all was pretty quiet, you know? Putting his water on the little shelf became part of his bedtime routine. He put different treasures on the big shelf. All of his rocks and the gourd and his favorite sticks, or a bunch of books he was fond of, or a selection of his favorite cars, or one single wooden train engine. They were just shelves, a part of his life, a part of his bedroom.

And then I put him down for a nap today.

Internet, I was so ready for him to take a nap.

In between trying to Do All The Things (including laundry, cleaning the bathroom, washing dishes, making bread, making lasagna, cleaning the dining room, sorting through junk to donate/discard it, moving furniture, sorting paperwork, etc) I also had to clean crushed raspberries off of wooden tracks and the wheels/undercarriage of trains; move the (not hooked up) laser printer up high so nobody could shove toys into it; check the VCR for DVDs; rescue a piece of religious jewelry; refill his cup with water that was EXACTLY THE RIGHT TEMPERATURE; put away the finger paints; AND MORE. Niko’s usually good about playing calmly, absorbed in what he’s doing, checking on me from time to time but otherwise happy. NOT TODAY.

So I finally wrangle him into bed, get him settled, and leave. This takes over an hour. There is much fake crying.

About fifteen minutes later I hear a clatter, a thump, and what might be a small child whimpering. So of course I head quickly toward Niko’s room. It’s really quiet so at first I think it was the upstairs neighbors but then I think IT’S TOO QUIET so I peek into his room. Niko’s burried under the covers, lying perfectly still, the smell of baby powder thick in the air, the shelves ripped off the wall.

What the ever loving hell.

One of those shelves was attached to he wall with screws and anchors and he just ripped it right out. Everything that had been on the shelves was on the floor. Where did the baby powder come from? Why did he feel the need to dump it liberally all over the place? Why do I bother asking these questions?

I confiscated the shelves.

I’m done.

I’m ready for bed. Or a Tom Collins and a trashy movie.

One or the other.

I’m done parenting for the day. DONE. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

Technorati Tags: 3 year old, parenting

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One of Niko’s favorite books right now is this coffee-table like book that’s full of photos of Chicago. It’s about fifteen years old, so there’s some photos of Marshall Field’s, and the Carson Pirie Scott building isn’t a Target, etc. Niko likes to look at the buildings and Nesko and I talk to him about what buildings we’ve been in, and he likes to look at the skylines and try to find CTA trains and buses.

We drove down to visit my parents and their dogs yesterday, and on our way back we detoured through downtown Chicago. It was night and the buildings were all lit up, and Niko could pick out the John Hancock building and the Sears Tower (fuck you, “Willis”) and looked for the CNA building but couldn’t see it. He kept enthusing “Oh, oh! This is just like my Chicago book! This is just like being in my Chicago book!” so that was really cool. And now we have a list of places he wants to walk around and visit when it’s warmer, including the Buckingham Fountain and having a picnic on the green grounds outside of the Shedd Aquarium, and going on a boat tour on the river.

We had plans to go to the Aquarium or the Museum of Science and Industry today (some glorious angel gave us a family membership to it) but it’s cold as hell out, two of us are recovering from illness and one of us is tiptoeing in illnesses direction, etc so we’re staying in and spending some family time together instead.

Six and Three is Nine, Nine and Nine is Eighteen.. is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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The past few days Niko’s been really on edge. You know the drill, sleeping poorly and flying off the handle at the smallest inconvenience, being super clingy, wanting to sleep with us, etc. It came to a head yesterday when he got more and more listless and eventually just curled up on his little pink Little Tykes plastic chair, swaddled in blankets, resting his head on the table. He’d only picked at his lunch. I asked him if he’d like to sit on the couch with me. “I wish I could, but I just can’t.” I picked him up and carried him to the couch and took his temperature. 100*. Funtimes.

He lay limply on the couch until nap time, volunteered to lie down, snuggled into bed with his hands folded under his cheek like a Victorian illustration of ideal childhood innocence, and only wanted one story. Then he slept for four hours. He awake mewling piteously for his tata but didn’t really object furiously to my presence. He sacked out on the couch and nursed his 99.9* fever and sipped orange juice. When Nesko came home, Niko ordered him to “go into your bedroom and put on comfy pants!” and then sat on Nesko’s lap on the couch for most of the evening. He didn’t eat much dinner, including the special chocolate cookie Nesko brought him. He didn’t even object much when Nesko trimmed his fingernails.

He went down with no struggle.

He joined us in bed during the tiny hours of the morning, settled right in, and for once did not thrash around and kick and pull hair. He just snuggled and slept. Nesko’s alarm went off and woke him up and Niko got out of bed to give Nesko a hug. Nesko asked Niko if he wanted to snuggle back into bed with me and Niko said no, he wanted to snuggle into his OWN bed. He slept until about 9, and I luxuriated and dozed (already busting up a minor resolution to improve my sleep habits by going to bed earlier and getting up at the same time every day OH WELL). I got up when I heard Niko go into the bathroom.

He was bright and cheerful. And hungry.

“I’m hungry!” he said. I asked him what he was hungry for. “I am hungry for everything! I’m hungry for everything on the earth.” Only he says “earth” like “erff.” I started cutting him up an apple while he told me about his morning.

“I went back to sleep and then I woke up while you were asleep. I said “oh, what a great morning to be awake!” and then I opened up my window.” By which he means he climbs onto the radiator in front of his window (which is off, we have central heat), perches there until he feels steady, then slowly stands up and grasps the cord of his mini blinds and raises them. Then he gingerly turns around, surveys the floor, and scoots down until he’s off the radiator. So he was basically doing mini mountain climbing.) He also told me that Nesko fixed his shelf, which is a recent addition to his room and which wasn’t firmly attached because there’s apparently something big and hard inside the wall. Nesko wound up affixing the shelf to the wall with command strip hook and loop tabs (it is a very small shelf) and Niko pulled the shelf off the wall WITH! A! FLOURISH! because he’s a consummate showman. He prattled on about his day and made his breakfast selections and when I took his temperature it was normal.

He’s eaten about half his breakfast and is now claiming to be full, which is slightly less than he eats on a good day. He’s making a “house” out of our big coffee table and burnt orange velvet chair and various blankets and stuffed animals, is pretty cheerful, but is also getting frustrated really quickly and his temperature’s back up to 99*. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes. He’s singing right now, and moving furniture around, which is a good sign but he’s also pausing to freak out that I won’t move his giant plastic slide over by the coffee table house so he can use it as a door, even though that would mean trapping me on the couch unable to get up. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world, really, oh no! Can’t get off the couch! But I made same bad dietary decisions last night and need access to the bathroom this morning. Oh cheese cake, why don’t you love me as much as I love you?

COFFEE TABLE HOUSE UPDATE:
He’s using his little pink chair and a cardboard box as his door, and installing them some plastic tools his djedo got him. “I just realized! I didn’t install them yet! With my fake tools! I need to screw in the screws! That’s all I needed, my screw driver and my hammer!” Aw, bless. He’s eating more breakfast under the table, crunching away in privacy. “I’m eating inside my little house under the table!”

Sick Kids is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

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Because I have the light and joyful heart of a child, I laugh at fart jokes and enjoy hiding behind things and jumping out at people. However, in part because I have the light and joyful heart of a child (READ: am really immature) I usually give myself away by giggling while hiding. It’s pathetic and hilarious, I know! But my big question is this: does Niko giggle while hiding because it’s his NATURE to hide and giggle or because I’ve NURTURED a hiding and giggling set of behavior in him?

What sorts of behaviors have you observed in your kid that could be nature or nurture?

Nature Vs Nurture is a post from: Now Showing! Please stop by and leave a comment! If you like my baby blog, please check out my other blog as well.

Technorati Tags: parenting, three year old

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Post tags: parenting, three year old

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