Not exactly a car wash

Nate helped me unload the dishwasher before work this morning.  He very carefully took out the small plastic valves for his zippy cup and put them first into a later plastic container and then put the whole hint into a cabinet.
He got a special sticker for helping me out and he was VERY pleased with himself.
He then went on to entertain himself with his shoes and sunglasses while I loaded the dirty dishes and started the dishwasher.  It came to be time to leave and I could not find my car key.  It is a little brick of a key with a metal key that comes out like a switchblade and a couple buttons for remote entry.  I have had it for ten years and it has been dropped a lot.  It is held together by scotch tape.  At one point I asked the dealer for a new key.  "Sure," they said.  "for a mere $300."  I declined.
So, back to this morning and the missing key.
After hunting for a few minutes I said, "Hey, does anyone know where my car key is?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Nate, sprinting toward the kitchen.  He stopped next to the dishwasher.  "It's in there."
And it was, nestled into the silverware holder between two spoons.
Squeaky clean and thankfully still functional.

Times Two

Nathan is 2.  Really, really 2.  Frustratingly, charmingly, limit testingly 2.  "What's that?, Right Now, and no" are his favorite words.  Dave and I deal with it the best way we can.  Team work, sharing the exhaustion, and the well placed time-out.  Luckily he makes up for all of it with his charming smile and his hilarious statements.

Yesterday, when Dave picked him up from day care, his teacher lamented that he had not been very obedient all day.  When asked to do or to stop doing something he said "No" and occasionally required physical relocation to get him to pay attention to what he was supposed to be doing.
Dave asked the (to me) obvious question "What did you do?  Did you put him in time out?"
"No," was the answer "we aren't allowed to do that.  We just redirect them."
Soooooo, you have a 2 year old being willfully disobedient and disrespectful and you plop them down in their favorite couch with their favorite book to "redirect" them?  That sounds suspiciously like rewarding bad behavior.
Am I crazy?
Maybe.
I'll admit that I am terribly naive.  I never asked about discipline.  He was 5 months old when he started day care.  I was worried about what they would do with the two swallows of breast milk he left behind in a bottle, not what they would do when he started chucking Legos at other kids.  I mean, I knew they wouldn't beat him.  I just sort of assumed there'd be some form of age appropriate consequence.  Time out, brief loss of a favorite privilege, unplanned toenail trimming.  Something to make it clear he'd crossed the line and it was not OK.
But no.  It seems they are not allowed to do that unless parents specifically OK it.  And I guess you have to independently volunteer your approval because I certainly never got any sort of time out permission form.  I would have signed that in a heart beat.
It seems, after an informal survey of the folks I know with kids, this lack of consequence is the norm for day care.
It really, really bothers me that this is the policy.
More, it bothers me the response I got from another mom.  "Well of course" she said, as if I was some sort of nut case "I don't want someone else disciplining my kid."

I don't think it is the day care's responsibility to teach my baby right from wrong.  Our job as parents is to teach them values and to flog them with wet newspaper until they internalize the rules.  I know that.  I spent a lot of time and energy and waistline in search of the privilege of doing just that.  But the unavoidable fact is that my child, and all the others in his class, spend more time with the day care providers than with us, the parents.  They spend all day with this peer group, these adults, and it does seem reasonable to expect or to at least empower them to set limits and dole out consequences.  It's not a wolf pack.  It's supposedly an environment where children are learning social skills.

The developmental job of a 2 year old is to test limits.  He's learning the rules of the world.  Someone has to teach him those rules.  The worst thing that can happen is for him to grow up thinking the rules don't apply to him (sociopath) or only apply in certain situations when certain people are looking.  No wonder bullying is becoming such a problem in our schools.  Children are coming to schools from day care where when they knocked a kid over to take their cookie the teacher pulled them aside and made them play on the computer to stop them from being mean.

Trouble

- with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bear.


Gummy Bears to be exact.  Gummy Bear Vitamins to be uber precise.
I've scoured the ingredient label, and I can't find crack, but maybe it's hidden in amongst the fancy chemical names for things like vitamin E (alpha-tocopheryl, anyone?).  Nevertheless, Nathan has a powerful need for the gummy bear.  Every morning we come down to the kitchen, and thus begins a frantic pantomine of pointing, signing "more" and "please" and then the addition of vocal choruses of "more-more", "buh-beh" (gummy bear, for those fortunate enough to be uninitiated to this ritual), "peasss-peasss" (surely you recognize please-please - in baby talk).  I think the intensity of his hand motions, pathetic pleading, and unutterable cuteness is almost enough to levitate the bottle off the counter and into his grasping hands.
Almost, but not quite.  He remains dependent of his mother and her mean-spirited, unfair, doctory, ridiculous, one vitamin per day rule.
Two days ago he resorted to rolling around on the kitchen floor in indignation, howling "please more gummy bear", tearing his hair, and beating on the ground.  And when his mother, cold-hearted woman that she is, simply stepped around him as she emptied the dishwasher and asked him to please stop shouting and refused to hear reason, he sat up and with tear-stained face, turned on his 1000-watt smile and said "peass-peass, buh-beh" in the the most pitifully pathetic tone ever given voice.
And I'll admit it.  I almost caved.  Almost went the route of "one extra vitamin couldn't possibly hurt him".  But I didn't.
I gave him dried mango instead.

Yes, I bribed him with sweets, but apparently standing firm on the gummy bear issue was enough because while we continue to have protracted conversations about my refusal to dish out more of the good stuff, there has been no more wailing or rolling (at least about "buh-beh's").

Fiber Deficiency?

"How are you socks supposed to keep your toes warm if they are in your mouth?"

I said that a lot yesterday.

I never used to put socks on him. Didn't see the point in warm muggy weather. But in the last 2 weeks it has been cold, and whenever his clothes don't have feet, I've been pulling on some fuzzy socks.

He's been pulling them off.

He almost seems enraged by them, grunting and yelling until they are off his feet. He pulls them off with his teeth, then he wads them up and puts them in his mouth.

Yum.

This leaves me with a dilemma. Naked toes or wet socks?

Doesn't matter what I decide because as soon as I turn my back, naked toes prevail.

Heard at My House Today

"Please don't smear the carrots with the hand Mommy just washed"

"Oh my goodness, you have carrots in your eyelashes!"

"Your hair smells like sweet potatoes . . . but you ate those yesterday"

Mommy: "Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum"
Nathan: slurping, sucking, smiling

All in all, starting solids is a lot of fun.