They are the very best kinds of people

Dear Naveen,

 

If I could have one wish for you when you are grown and living your own life it’s this: I hope you come across a three year old or two in your time. I say this because in my opinion, three year olds are the very best kinds of people. And if you are lucky enough to know one intimately, I hope he or she steals your heart.

 

The way you’ve stolen mine.

 

You slay me everyday with what you say and how you say it:

 

“It’s freezing hot Mama! The water is freezing hot!”  Immediately, I know to add a little cold water to your bath.

 

“Gramma! I have a penis!” This type of thing is said very loudly, usually in public places. Your sweet, gentle (and very modest!) Gramma took this in stride a few weeks ago while we were at the beach in Bayfield.

 

“Hey you pipsqueak, get back here, you!”  or "Hey you Meatballdoggie!" I almost always cringe at this hoping you won’t get punched in the nose, because you almost exclusively taunt older children you encounter at the park or who are walking innocently by our house with these instigations.

 

“Mommy look at that tiny little baby!” Usually you are pointing to a fellow toddler, often while you have a pacifier in your mouth.

 

I'm in awe of how much you love me. I was carrying you across the lawn on the weekend. Your little legs were wrapped around my body while you tenderly swept the hair away from my face you said, “I want to see your face Mama.” It was such a moment. 

I could have wept.

 

Your tenure here has been short, but you are as particular as an old granny when it comes to how you want things done. 

 

Like at Costco a few weeks ago. I made the mistake of taking your hotdog out of its bun because I knew that’s how you liked to eat it (“Bun sandwich” you call it). Evidently you wanted to do this yourself. You slammed your fist on the table, dropped to the very dirty floor of the crowded eating area, kicked your feet and howled at all the ways I’d wronged you. 

Nothing I could say (or threaten) would make you sit up and start over. Your Dad, Brother and I continued to eat, shrugging off the stares of onlookers and waiting out your tantrum. I was reminded that people are right. Three is the new Two.

“Take someone who doesn't keep score, who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he's free.”  Rumi
 

I took my time writing this post because I wanted to get it right. Get you right.You are so much more than my simple words though. 

When you are enjoying something you say, "Mmmm, Mommy this chocolate tastes just like chocolate! I WUB chocolate!" At times like these, I look for a jar and wish I had the ability to save that instance for a rainy day. 

Within minutes of arriving anywhere, you know exactly where all lawn mowers and other relevant lawn maintenance equipment is located. You inquire every morning about our real vacuum (which you are terrified of) and discuss daily your toy vacuum and the toy vacuums of people you know ( a topic that after all this time still satisfies you enormously). 

All of this is to say, I love you at three my sweetheart. 

All of you. 

Every single, sticky, feisty, sweet, naughty, quirky and tender part of you. Thank you for filling my days up with such easy joy. Thank you for relieving them of boredom. 

 

Happy, happy birthday!

Love Mom.

 You're also crazy daring.

 

 And non-cooperative

 

Fearless

 And the best cuddler ever.

You say tomato he says potato

Naveen has it figured out. He's found a loophole in language development.

He’s decided that he’s good with what he’s learned so far – he need not go further.  Hair style is the only criteria necessary when evaluating one person's resemblance to another. It’s his only criteria. He doesn’t care about skin colour (this kid has ethics!), height, weight or age (he’s so not judgemental!) or even what species you are (we should all be so open-minded!).

Anytime he sees a woman with longish dark-type hair he happily exclaims, “Look Mommy, it’s you!” It doesn’t matter that we're watching a Revlon commercial or that the woman he’s pointing to is 23 years old with legs up to her armpits. 

And when he sees Janet Jackson footage back when she had short cropped hair (I was watching an educational documentary called Celebrities who are Hot and 40) naturally he thinks of Aunt Pat, Shaune’s 70 year old, Caucasian aunt. In his defense Aunt Pat does have short hair. And for a long time when a certain episode of Cat in the Hat came on, he would scream with great delight that it was Grampa. He was pointing to  an animated clam at the bottom of the ocean who had a mustache. 

What can I say? The more I saw this clam, the more I was inclined to agree.

He has no use, either,  for most of the five senses. He feels strongly that the phrase "sounds like" is all you really need.  Last night at dessert he told Deaglan that the chocolate frozen yogurt sounded just like a popsicle.  And today he noticed that his winter coat sounds like his older brother's.

I like his style. Simple. Efficient. To the point. 

When I was running my 10K on New Year's Eve I was thinking how all these extra words I have at my disposal can be really quite dangerous. It was cold and dark and I was feeling insecure, lonely, and thirsty. Hundreds of people whizzed past me.

I began to question whether I'd actually been running the right mileage for the past three months - maybe Shaune had actually downloaded the Indian version of RunKeeper, thinking he was being racially sensitive. Did their metric system work the same way their money did? 

Because I'll tell you, half way through I felt like I'd been running for hours, possibly days. I started resenting all the trim little LuLu Lemon bottoms that kept passing in front of me, while I lagged behind uncomfortably in my Costco get-up. I started making up stories about  the faster runners. Those show offs.

But you know what,  I made it. And in record time. I might be a little competitive after all.

Here I am prior to the race. 

Here I am after the race in the parking lot right before an enormous coughing fit.

The good parts of a day

Yesterday morning on the three minute drive to school, Deaglan asked me this:

“Mommy, those kids that live in the poor place, do they have Daddies?”

“Ya, they do.”

“Then why don’t they have toys?”

“Because their mommies and daddies don’t have the same kinds of jobs that Daddy and I have. A lot of them don't have jobs at all.”

“Why not?”

“Because they aren’t as lucky as we are. That’s why it’s important to share our money with them.”

“So they can get toys for their houses?”

“Some of them don’t even have houses honey” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Sabina and Keerthana probably live in small huts that have no bathrooms or even kitchens. When they get the money we send them, they use it to buy food and clothes not toys.”

“What’s a hut?”

“Like a tent.”

And then after school, he ran through the door wearing a poppy. His teacher had dulled the sharp end of the pin with a bit of balled up masking tape.

“Who gave you that?” I asked.

“Mrs. V.”

“Why?”

“Because we need to remember the dead.”

“Oh ya? Why do we need to remember them?”

“Because they fighted for us to give us Canada. That’s why we have to wear the poppy. There’s something about blood too but I don’t remember.”

“Oh,” I turned to Naveen just then who was hitting the laptop with a plastic hammer.

“Navie, cut it out! Hammer the cushion on the couch instead please.”

“I don’t wanna hammo the couch," hitting the laptop again.

“If you hit the computer again, I’m going to take that away!”

“MAMA, YOU NOT THE BOSSA ME!”

“Actually, yes I am.” 

Then a few hours later, just before bedtime Deaglan asked me if he could listen to his song. I found it on my tablet and handed it over to him. I glanced his way watching the Youtube video. His face was thoughtful; melancholy, even. I sang along softly while I changed Naveen's diaper. Deaglan looked over at me. Our eyes met and held for a few seconds. He smiled, a shy sweet dimply smile and then went back to watching his song.

More

Tonight after dinner when Naveen caught me at the freezer, sneaking the ear off of a chocolate bunny, he ran fast to where I was, looked up with his enormous brown eyes and pleaded,

“Chocate? Chocate please Mama.” I rolled my eyes, peeled the electric blue foil wrapping off an egg and handed it to him.

A few minutes later, when he’d swallowed the last bit, chocolaty spit coating his chin and shirt, he gestured the sign for “more”. Again with those eyes. But this time I refused to let them stir me.

“Nope. Chocate all gone!”

When he asked a few more times, the fingers on both hands scrunched together, repeatedly making contact with each other, something he’d learned at daycare eons ago and saw that I still refused, he walked closer and began slapping my legs.

“Go ‘way Mama, you go ‘way!!”

This is how he deals with us lately when we deny him.

He then launched into a tantrum right there on the blonde laminate in our kitchen. Slightly detached from experience, I walked around him, tidied the dinner dishes and went back to helping Deaglan with his homework, keenly aware that this smallest of my boys was now howling my name and crying real tears.

I thought about how he must have felt: crazy wild with frustration and desire. I understood it – knew that it never goes away; we just learn to express it civilized.

It was such a contrast to my day. I’d been quiet inside, wordless. There was a desert-like quality to my thoughts, barren of the usual lush emotions, lost from my own needs, as if I was in a dream; one of those voiceless screaming dreams where no one hears my panic. And I felt the tightness in my throat, an achy thirst, aimless in its search for just the right thing.

It took a while to find it though – I’m slow to understand even after all these years with myself. I read a bit of her and it revived me. I remembered again for the gazillionth time that I need to feed my soul regularly or I will not thrive.

I gently coaxed Deaglan through connecting the dots, coloured the triangles yellow while he worked away on the red circles and eventually Naveen quieted, found my lap and snuggled into me.

This was yesterday morning. The Easter Bunny left Deaglan a scooter which he lost interest in within three and a half seconds. However, he refused to take this helmet off. Naveen received a bubble-blowing lawnmower which he lovingly referred to as "Vakoom" all the way to the park.

What little boys are made of

That’s it.

I’m bottling up my little Naveen’s bursting-at-the -seams cuteness and sending it to all of you. Just a warning though, it won’t be all sweet cream. There might be traces of souring, tainted from the way he holds us hostage these days with his volatile tantrums, throwing himself full body onto the floor at even the faintest hint of noncompliance on our parts, shrieking with discontent.

Like a few days ago when he got it into his head that he needed a cookie, and so started with an endearing little question “Mama? Ki-Ki?” And then when I didn’t respond immediately enough for his liking, because well, I was driving, he turned it up a few notches, “KI-KI!!!!!” A warning that someone had better get him a goddamned cookie or some major shit was gonna hit the fan and he wouldn’t be held responsible for the aftermath.

We’ve been riding the kiddy rollercoaster of ecstasy, times where we can barely contain our urge to gobble him up, and agony, wide-eyed shock that this screaming, kicking banshee is our babiest boy.

And you should see the three of us – yes even Deaglan has learned that it is best to just comply with his royal highness – racing around, doing his bidding, torn because he’s too young to discipline but sensing that he understands the power he wields over us, like a sloppy drunk holding a loaded gun.

Oh Toddlerhood, you are bittersweet.

They did a photoshoot at daycare a few weeks ago. Can you see the equal parts slugs and snails and puppy dog tails in those mischievous eyes?

We've been sick

Before kids I was almost never sick. Really. And if I was, I could bury myself under a blanket and watch movies all day until I either had to go back to work or I felt better.

I was thinking about this all last week while with a throbbing head and clogged sinuses I tried everything under the sun to relieve the kids' discomfort and bring down their fevers. Naveen kept clawing at me as if to say make it stop Mommy. And Deaglan was very articulate in letting me know that his body hurt, his neck ached, and even that his mouth didn't feel good.

We were almost out of the woods but then Deaglan caught it again. High fever, body aches, runny nose. Around and around.

It hasn't been all phlegm and headaches though. Naveen is almost crawling. He's doing that thing where he uses his arms to drag his body to his destination. And Deaglan is his usual charming self. Here are a few things he's said that I want to remember from these days:

• Mommy, you're a really good friend to me.
• But I already washed my hands with my mouth.
• This truck is broken, it needs to go to a garage sale.
• When my sister asked him what Naveen wanted for Christmas he told her: Just milk, Naveen likes milk.
• When Santa comes for your birthday Mommy, you can ask him for a present.

I hope you are all well my friends and be assured that I will be making my rounds to your wonderful blogs to catch up on what you've been up to!

Terrible two's or not

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that there are many moments of deep sighing these days in dealing with the antics of the local toddler.

Yesterday I had to give Deaglan a time-out for opening a second gift from under the tree. He had already opened one, something I couldn't bring myself to get worked up about because, after all, he's only almost three.
But I explained, in detail, the process: how we wait until Christmas morning, after Santa has come to open the presents.
This boring explanation could not trump the heady buzz he must have felt opening that first gift and hitting the jackpot with a Thomas the train bath toy. So he went for it again while I was distracted in the kitchen.
And today we went to see Santa at the mall. Because Shaune and I get creeped out by mall santa's, we weren't planning on taking the kids unless they brought it up, but we were already at the mall, and there was no line-up and that new-parent bug took over. We even paid the eleven bucks for the five by seven print we could have photoshopped ourselves for a fraction of that price.

After we left the mall, Deaglan had a million questions:

• When was he going to get his station (a three vehicle -police car, ambulance and firetruck - parking garage he fell in love with a few days ago)
• Was Santa going to that store to get it?
• When would Santa see his goats (I explained for the tenth time that they were reindeers)
• Why couldn't he have his station now

And the fiction you find yourself weaving about the north pole and the elves is RIDICULOUS.

I know that they call this phase he's going through the terrible two's but I have to say, it's a lot of great stuff too.

The joy he gets from substituting every other word with poop, pee and stinky bum/feet/armpit - well it's hard to always remain neutral and discouraging. And the fact that he asks me all the time if I think he's funny, kills me. 

Last night before we started reading our last book at bedtime, he looked at me and said Mommy, I'm going to be funny now. And sure enough he was.

This is my entry for Pour your heart out. Check out some of the other posts.

Poop, pee and other food groups

                                                                      

 Lately we can't have a conversation with Deaglan without him bringing something toilet-esque into it. You know what I mean parents of toddlers?

On Saturdays we always have pizza for dinner from our favourite place Soprano's. (They make the best pizza for a great price and anyone I've ever dealt with from the restaurant has been nothing but lovely!) Anyway, tonight when I served Deaglan a slice this is how it went down:

Deaglan: Mommy I don't want pizza.

Me: Aren't you hungry?

Deaglan: Yes, I'm hungry.

Me: Well then, eat. That's what we're having for dinner.

Deaglan: I don't want pizza.

Me sighing: Okay then what do you want?

Deaglan: Poop.

Me biting the inside of my cheek: You're not having poop. It's   pizza or nothing.

Deaglan lots of laughter from him: Okay then how about Pee?

Now he's almost falling over laughing.

Me: Oh boy. Let me know when you're hungry then.

And while I'm on the subject of body fluids, Naveen had some sort of eye thing - likely Deaglan brought home pink eye from daycare. I remembered my midwife singing the praises of breast milk and how it can cure just about anything. And truth be told, I was too tired to call around to try and get a doctor's appointment. So I squeezed breast milk in the baby's eye a few times a day for three days and that bad boy cleared right up!

And oh the tantrums

I'd be remiss if I let Deaglan's toddlerhood pass without writing a solid post on tantrums. As much as you hear about all of our special moments, and my ga-ga kind of love for my boys here on this blog, I don't want you to think I'm living in some creepy opposite land where my almost-three-year old doesn't make me want to rip my hair out at least a few times a week and whisper to the infant keep up the good work, you're my favourite.

I wish I could describe in words the screechy banshee-like ugly cry Deaglan goes into when a tantrum overtakes him. It's this nerve-jangling, stomach-lurching kind of shrieking that unites Shaune and me on at least this one thing - we need to either figure out how to make him stop or devise a way to unplug our hearing. And there is NO REASONING with him...no telling him he might wake up the baby, no reminding him that he is no longer a baby, no bribing him with chocolate or money, no kissing, no hugging our way out of it. It stops as mysteriously as it begins and we are forced to just wait it out.

Yesterday, and I don't want to make myself out into a hero or anything, but yesterday, despite that it was near-freezing outside, or that I had slept a total of 30 minutes the night before and the solid truth that the last thing I wanted to do was go outside, I suited us all up and took the kids to the park as I try to do everyday. Deaglan trailing along on his tricycle felt that I was walking too fast for his liking and launched into a tantrum. I wanna go home Mommy!!

After some back and forth:

Me: We're not going home.

Him: Yes mommy, I WANT TO GO HOME!!!!!

I became silent and neutral (I'd read that was the appropriate response to wait a tantrum out) and continued pushing the stroller down the sidewalk towards the park while Deaglan followed me on his trike, crying hysterically, much like the way you would if someone just beat you with a baseball bat. And of course every retired grandma and grandpa within a two mile radius was out walking our route at that exact time, and seemingly having forgotten what this phase of parenthood was like, stopped to ask the kid if he was okay. Lots of AWWWW you poor little sweetiepie, so that his cries, now with an appreciative audience, became louder and more agonized.

He's fine, move it along, I wanted to say.

And later that afternoon when I announced that we were getting into our costumes to go Trick-or-Treating at Mommy's work, you would have thought I said, I'm gonna stick pins in your eyes and serve you a big helping of dog poop for supper.

I don't know. They say things like You need a license to drive a car, but anyone can have kids. I think the saying should be amended to include something about the specialized forensic child psychology graduate degree and nerves of steel needed to ride out these expressions of development.

Armpit

I wonder sometimes what the kids will think when they realize that I keep/have kept a blog where I've put them front and centre. It could go either way. I mean they could shatter my daydream that one day they will be grateful that I recorded their childhood in such a personal and public way by becoming angry that I would expose them in such a way. They could find it one of those irritating things they can't stand about their parents. I don't know. It is a different day from when I was a kid, that's for sure.

I wonder how Deaglan will feel at age 17 that I wrote a post about his love of sticking his hand in his mother's armpit for comfort when he was a toddler. That I told anyone in the free world who cared to know that almost everytime I came into a room, he looked for his beloved choo-choo (soother) and announced the word Armpit implying that he wanted me to sit on the couch beside him and put my arm around him so that he could access the warmth of my armpit while sucking on his soother.

I wonder if he'll roll his eyes that I wrote this post and even included the history of Armpit. That he always, from the day he was born, needed to let me know that he needed comfort, by pinching my arms in the beginning with his pudgy baby hands and then throughout the process of weaning him from my breast , developing the habit of slipping his hand into my armpit to continue our closeness.

I wonder what he'll think about the fact that I loved Armpit and it was just as much a security blanket for me as it was for him. That when I stopped nursing him, I was the saddest I'd ever been in my life because I missed his baby suckling, his need for me in that way. That he substituted this special bond we had with something new, something else just for us. That when I came home from the hospital with Naveen, I cried out of his earshot that I couldn't do Armpit as often first because I was inept at trying to juggle both of their needs.

I wonder if he will ever understand how much I treasured Armpit and the thought of its inevitable ending always reduced me to near-tears. I wonder if he'll understand that keeping this blog helped me remember and savour these treats of motherhood before they slipped through my grasp so mercilessly.

I wonder.

The picture is of Deaglan in the backpack on our wedding day as Shaune and I raced around to get the backyard ready for our guests. It's hard to believe he was that small.

The conversations I'm having

Deaglan: Mommy what's that?

Me: A street cleaner.

Deaglan: What's it doing?

Me: Cleaning the street.

Deaglan: Why?

Me: Because the street is dirty.

Deaglan: Why?

Me: Because the cars drive on it and make it dirty.

Deaglan: Why?

Me: Because they have dirt on their tires that fall on the road.

Deaglan: Why?

Me: Because it does.

Deaglan: But why Mommy?

Me: Oh Honey look there's a firetruck!

Who's running this show anyways?

Isn't it amazing how life just happens anyway even when it isn't on your to-do list?

Here's what I mean.

My goal was to start taking the task of potty training Deaglan seriously in the last six months of my maternity leave. I figured that by then Naveen might be sleeping a bit through the night and I would have the energy to roll-up my sleeves and really focus on reaching this milestone.

But life had other plans for me.

Deaglan developed this crazy diaper rash a few weeks ago - the first one that wasn't related to teething. We went to the doctor twice about it, coming home with a different remedy each time. Both times we were instructed to let him go commando around the house as often as possible to let his skin breathe. Although we did instruct Deaglan to let us know if he had to go, planning to hustle him to the potty each time, we had no idea that within a few days he would potty train himself. Yesterday he ran into the living room and said Mommy come and see what I did. Gulp! I thought I was going to be lead to the kitchen with the entire contents of the fridge on the floor or something disastrous like that but instead he lead me to the potty where he had peed perfectly within the confines of the vessel.

I think you all know where I'm going with this. There may be sleep in my future!

Heart of Gold

On the way to the library today, Deaglan kept saying: Heart of gold Mommy, Heart of gold. It took me a few minutes to figure out that he was requesting a song. We were in Shaune's car, the one he has been driving Deaglan to daycare in since I had the baby.

I only knew one song with that title and it was by Neil Young. I tried the CD player and sure enough the first song was Heart of Gold by Neil Young. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Deaglan's lips were moving. He actually knew most of the lyrics and was singing along.

Sing with me Mommy he yelled over the music. I joined him in the chorus and had to smile to myself. Obviously he and Shaune listen to this quite often together on their rides to the daycare but I was still amazed that he not only loved the song but also knew almost every word. We had to listen to it three times on the 12 minute drive to the library.

I can't wait to tell him about this when he gets older.

The toddler

As challenging as these days are, I wish I could really capture them in my mind so that I will always remember.

At 2.5 Deaglan is his own person so much so that sometimes we have to remind ourselves that he really is only two.

Like this morning when I asked him (for the hundredth time) to get out of the baby's swing he responded with: Mommy please don't talk to me like that, I don't like it.
He even had my tone right.

Most of the time he is sweet and loving often telling all of us that he "wuvs" us. He's crazy about his grandparents and his baby brother, wants constantly to play trucks where he will assign you the truck you are allowed to use and has a million questions mostly about inanimate objects like bridges, ambulances or other moving vehicles. It usually begins with - look mommy there's a bridge! What's the bridge doing mommy?

He thinks, like his Dad, any noises emitted from the body are downright hilarious and he will not hesitate to announce Mommy tooted!!! should you accidentally experience some gas in his presence. And then quickly Say excuse me, mommy! Say excuse me!

Today as I was toting Naveen around in the carrier while boiling a turkey dog for Deaglan's lunch stepping over toys and crusts from his toast this morning, I found myself affirming:

This is exactly where I'm supposed to be. It's okay that this is the fourth time I've given him a turkey dog in three days and it's okay that the house is a mess and it's okay that I've threatened to put him in a time out 15 times because he won't stop trying to hit the baby's head with a balloon. This is my life right now.

I know that I won't remember these days. I don't remember much about the blur of the first three months of Deaglan's life either. All I know is that this time around I'm a bit more relaxed, a bit easier on myself and a lot more aware that I better enjoy the moments I can because they go by so damned quickly!

Letting go and reluctantly letting God

At breakfast this morning, I promised Deaglan that if he ate his cinnamon toast he could have some Pez candy afterwards. In my defense, it was either send him to daycare on an empty stomach or a sugar high.

And yesterday when he refused to come out of the jungle gym at McDonald's playland, feeling completely defeated I coaxed him out by lying that I had seen Gramma and Grampa out in the parking lot. Sorry Bill and Fran but I tried everything else from threats to bribes. I probably should have let him play first and get the sundae afterwards.

I find letting go to be the most difficult part of parenting. Letting go of ideals - the kind of parent you swore you'd be before you actually had kids; letting go of judgements - the I can't believe they let their kids do that kind of thinking and the hardest letting go - letting go of your kids when they are ready to break away from you bit by bit.

If you've read even two posts from this blog, you know that until recently, Deaglan was the centre of my universe. And with the addition of his brother in our lives, the relationship between my first boy and I has shifted in a way that has sometimes left me heartbroken.

I know as a fairly well-read person that all the changes are normal given the new family dynamic as well as his stage in development. Like how he lets me know that he doesn't want to see me at the end of his visits with his grandparents every Saturday or that he seems just as content having Shaune read to him before bed when that used to be 'our' thing. I'm trying to take all of these changes in stride, trying to keep my ego out of it.

I've been telling myself that even though some of these changes feel really really uncomfortable, I accept them. That there is a larger story unfolding here. The story of our lives. The story of my life, and of their lives.

Oh and while I'm making a very good case for why I will definitely NOT get mother-of-the-year award, you should also know that last week when he bolted away from me at the park - me with a three week old in the stroller and still aching from the c-section - and I finally caught up with him, I instilled a fear of "the bad man" in him that makes me cringe with shame everytime I think back on it.

Backlash

The other day I grabbed myself a bowl of cheerios and took a well deserved break on the couch to eat it. Deaglan noticing this said: Mommy, no eating on the couch! Do you want a time out?

Sheesh! Hasn't this kid ever heard of double standards??

Mama's little helper - or not?

Deaglan's favourite show right now is Dora.

It's become almost worrisome to Shaune and me. There's an on-demand children's channel included in our cable package that offers tons of episodes of some of the more popular kids' shows for free. We try to use it with caution.

However, once he watches one episode of Dora, he wants more. We try to always set the boundaries before turning on the TV - like we'll say: Okay, you can watch two Doras but then the TV is going off. Do you understand? And he'll nod in agreement to this verbal contract but we can tell what he's really saying is: yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, move out of the way and turn it up.

But then when the two episodes are done and we click the "off " button, we are treated to a full blown temper tantrum - rolling on the floor, crying, kicking, telling the unlucky parent in attendance that he doesn't like them.

I find it difficult to navigate this tricky and controversial topic. I mean I know that lots of parents will tell you that letting your child watch television is just plain bad, it teaches your kids to stop thinking for themselves, can cause this or that etc. And I've read a lot of literature that gives guidance on this.

But the bottom line truth for me is - it's nice to get a break!

Stumped

Last night as we were walking to the car from the daycare, Deaglan pointed to a truck in the Daycare’s driveway and said Look Mommy, a truck. And when I asked him what colour the truck was he replied correctly that it was red.

As I was buckling him in, he pointed to one of the student teachers and said Look Mommy it’s Sarah. And I said, Oh yeah, there’s Sarah.

Then he stumped me.

What colour is Sarah Mommy? He asked.

I know that he didn’t really mean it the way it sounded. I know that he was mimicking the question I had asked him earlier but I truly did not know how to answer him. In fact I didn’t want to answer him. It made me feel really uncomfortable just thinking about putting a label on her.

I wondered, not for the first time since having a child, whether this too was nature, nurture or a bit of both.

I tried to recall if there was a definitive moment in my life where I remember noticing someone’s skin colour. I wrote a bit about it here but really my life has been so different than Deaglan’s will surely be.

What colour do you think Sarah is? I asked.

Blue. He said.

I left it at that.

Always learning

Toddler discipline has been on my mind a lot lately. Especially after I wrote this post, my uneasiness with the techniques we'd been using (timeout and count to three) had been increasing. I wasn't able to articulate for myself why this was, but I just knew, it was something I needed to explore.

And sure enough, the next day when I tuned into a program I try to catch on Mondays called The parenting show (a terribly produced local call-in show that looks like it's run out of your neighbour's basement), the topic was toddler-hood. The content of the show is always excellent and right on. There is a host and a psychotherapist who is a parenting expert named Alyson Schafer.

Anyway, someone called in with the very same sentiments I was feeling. She felt that giving a time-out for everything didn't seem very logical. Alyson agreed and said that discipline needed to make sense to kids. If you wanted their cooperation, then the punishment needed to fit the crime. Please note that these are my own words because Alyson rarely uses words like punishment, timeout or even discipline. She gave some examples of consequences for different behaviours and then talked about her latest book. I had been meaning to borrow it from the library for some time but once I realized that the entire thing was about how to deal with misbehaviour, I hesitated no longer.

It's excellent! I'll give you the name here and a few points I've really found valuable but won't bore you with a detailed description. It's called Honey, I wrecked the kids.

Alyson talks about logical consequences, natural consequences and eliciting cooperation versus being punitive.

• I love that she makes the point that we as adults seem to think we always know best simply because we are adults.
• She points to ways we can really listen to what our kids are asking for and responding to that instead of thinking we know what they are asking. For example she uses the common problem of attention seeking. She explains that usually there are very real and good reasons why a child is trying to get a parent's attention - maybe you didn't spend any quality time with him after work and instead robotically fed him, bathed him and tucked him into bed.
• She talks about using consistent non-verbal action instead of nagging. (The kid keeps jumping on the couch. You tell him once to stop because he will fall and hurt himself - or whatever the reason - and then the next time and all the times after grab him off the couch without saying a word). And so many other techniques that make sense and are intuitive.
  
  Now don't get me wrong, just because I'm almost finished reading the book doesn't mean I've grasped the concepts. Yesterday Deaglan kept jumping off of his potty onto the floor. I told him once, moved the potty back into the bathroom and found him jumping off of one his kiddie chairs when I came back. It took everything in me to not count to three and then give him a time out. It would have been a lot less work.
  
  You'll notice in these pictures a partially clad Deaglan. Lately he finds everything feels better when done in the buff. Yesterday before he realized how much fun it was to jump off of his potty, he stood atop of it, pantless, and sang Kumbaya at the top of his lungs. The night before that we had a hard time getting him to the table for dinner fully clothed. We finally accepted that we would be eating with a Nude Dude.

What you didn't expect when expecting

I wish I could say that Deaglan was looking off into the distance here, contemplating life, but most likely he was watching Dora or Diego.

It's impossible to completely limit his TV watching and I'm pretty sure we go over the recommended number hours for his age group. However, we try not to let him watch programming with commercials and most of what he watches is pretty wholesome.

And lately I'm doing something I never dreamed I would do as a parent. I'm using the count to three in my disciplining. I guess we all imagine that our kids will be different, they'll listen when we ask them the first time or even the second. But this has not been the case around here.

Shaune and I find that every other sentence coming out of our mouths are either - do you want a time out? or I'm gonna count to three and if you don't listen then you'll get a time out!

The count to three has been working like a charm. Rarely have either of us had to reach three before seeing the desired behaviour. We always try to praise the good behaviour, tell him that he's a good listener or that he did a good job but honestly! I hadn't prepared for this part of parenting.

And finally speaking of things I couldn't have imagined, Deaglan's eating habits won't exactly earn me Mother of the year. I've put either fruit and/or vegetables on that kid's plate since he started eating solids to almost no avail. I've often found myself giving him chicken nuggets or a hotdog because I know he'll eat them.

Sheesh!

Deaglan is wearing a sweater knit by his Gramma - Shaune's mom, who took up knitting especially for Deaglan.