Squidbits
I sort of lost a month in there. A late September report and no October report - oh, well. I lost a month around the same time last year. The latter half of the year is always a little chaotic, what with the holidays and the elections and the freelance work and whatever. I wish I'd done it, though, because there were two weeks in there where the Squid went away with his Daddy - gone ahead to the in-laws, where I joined them later for the holiday - and he was one little guy when he left, and really quite another when I saw him again.
Basically, he turned three. Not really three - he won't do that for another few months - but developmentally three. He now tries to impose his will - negatively ("I don't like to eat the lunch!") or positively ("you come with me to play trains, Mommy!") on us, and cries when it doesn't work. Full-on fake hands-over-eyes fall-on-the-floor whimpering. "I sad today," he tells us. He doesn't have the logic chain to explain why he is sad - if asked, he usually tells us where he is sad. "I sad in the crib." "I sad in the home." "I sad in the bathroom." "I sad at preschool." There have been a couple of "because" statements that have made sense, but more that have gone backward. "I in time out because I sad."
And there has been a lot of time out. We have had hitting, of us and other kids. We have had refusal to come when asked. We have had grabbing toys away from Cousin Ruthie ("No, mine!" is in full effect, with occasional tears and lots of trouble sharing - one of the correct causal statements he managed this last week was "I sad because sharing is hard.") We're trying the counting thing for resistant behaviors - 1, 2, 3, and if he hasn't done what we ask by three we put him in a time out for a minute - but again, he's just a tiny bit too young for the logic chain. The whole "if/then" construction still isn't quite there - "Eat a bite of your pasta and then you can have a cookie" gets us nowhere. It could be "eat a bite of your pasta and then you can have all the cookies you want" - the problem lies in understanding rather than in incentive.
Squid and I found a fire engine in the Safeway parking lot. They let him "drive" it!
We're keeping it up, though. Trying to be consistent with it. He'll get it eventually, and hopefully by then we will have the habits we need. But I have to admit to being baffled and dismayed by these new challenges. They aren't anything the other parents we know haven't been dealing with for a long time, but they're pretty new to us, and I don't deal well with, for example, challenges around food. It makes me crazy when he asks for a specific food only to reject it, or when he refuses to eat anything and then has a fit because I won't give him crackers. We are going to be phasing out all cracker snacks in the hopes of actually getting some nutrients into him during this period, but I swear I got maybe two bites of veg into him and maybe ditto of protein over the last two weeks. Gah.
We're working, also, on diction and on rhetoric. I never thought I'd be one of those moms who doesn't let their kid say "yeah" and insists on "Yes," but he picked up a weird quirk recently where he says "yawwwww" or even "nyoaaww" instead of "yeah" and I can't tell whether he means yes or no, so we're trying to train him out of it and into "yes." And we're trying to talk about asking nicely, instead of demanding, so "Grandpa, you listen!" or "Mommy come here now!" become, "can you please listen?" and "can you please come here?" "I want milk!" becomes, "can I have milk please?" and even "I don't like to eat the spinach!" becomes, "no, thank you." It's a work in progress, but he is still, at heart, a friendly and loving kid, so he kind of gets it. When people come in the door he often runs to greet them with a "[Name]! Good to see you!" and a huge hug.
He's started having trouble separating at preschool again, and crying at bedtime, but I think that sort of stuff is par for a developmental spurt. He's latched on to his blanky, which has always been a nice-thing-to-have, as a real security object. He's trying out words about emotions, like "happy" and "frustrated" and "scared" and "angry" and "sad," though they're often attributed to garbage trucks or trains and because of his why/where confusion, we can't really elicit the reasoning behind the moods yet. He's started to tell more elaborate stories, and more fanciful stories, too. And he's figured out delaying tactics, so bedtime is now a hilarious series of rapid-fire semi-tearful requests for things that don't involve being in his crib. Oh, toddler. So transparent.
Power struggles and negotiations: the upcoming themes of 2009 Squidbits, I'm afraid. I'm about to take a long weekend in L.A. with him, and Himself isn't coming, so I anticipate being put to many a test of my patience. I don't mean to make it sound like it's all trials; it's not. This evening, in between an argument about chicken for dinner and a time-out for climbing on me when he'd been repeatedly asked not to, we went grocery shopping, talked about our days, read books, ate dinner, talked about tractors, and watched a Dr. Seuss video on youtube. We're doing fine. It's just an adjustment.
He really enjoyed our holiday in Illinois, and the time with our friends and his whole extended family (minus one uncle), but he was also palpably glad to be home. And we're glad to be home with him, too. We curl up in the evening under the afghan my friend L. made for us and read about tractors and excavators and backhoes. We watch garbage trucks on youtube. We make pancakes and sing songs and play trains. It's cozy. I can't wait to have Christmas together this year; he's figured out about presents but he's not rabid about them, yet, and I'm hoping to get the tree tomorrow so we can decorate it in time.
Squid lines up his collection of die-cast cars on the coffee table
You may have noticed a marked decline in photographic quality over the last few months; Himself has asked me not to use his photos of the Squid on my blog. So you get my blurry snaps instead. Sorry, folks! My digital camera doesn't do very well indoors, and with the advent of colder days, we're not venturing out as much, but I'll do my best.
Basically, he turned three. Not really three - he won't do that for another few months - but developmentally three. He now tries to impose his will - negatively ("I don't like to eat the lunch!") or positively ("you come with me to play trains, Mommy!") on us, and cries when it doesn't work. Full-on fake hands-over-eyes fall-on-the-floor whimpering. "I sad today," he tells us. He doesn't have the logic chain to explain why he is sad - if asked, he usually tells us where he is sad. "I sad in the crib." "I sad in the home." "I sad in the bathroom." "I sad at preschool." There have been a couple of "because" statements that have made sense, but more that have gone backward. "I in time out because I sad."
And there has been a lot of time out. We have had hitting, of us and other kids. We have had refusal to come when asked. We have had grabbing toys away from Cousin Ruthie ("No, mine!" is in full effect, with occasional tears and lots of trouble sharing - one of the correct causal statements he managed this last week was "I sad because sharing is hard.") We're trying the counting thing for resistant behaviors - 1, 2, 3, and if he hasn't done what we ask by three we put him in a time out for a minute - but again, he's just a tiny bit too young for the logic chain. The whole "if/then" construction still isn't quite there - "Eat a bite of your pasta and then you can have a cookie" gets us nowhere. It could be "eat a bite of your pasta and then you can have all the cookies you want" - the problem lies in understanding rather than in incentive.
Squid and I found a fire engine in the Safeway parking lot. They let him "drive" it!
We're keeping it up, though. Trying to be consistent with it. He'll get it eventually, and hopefully by then we will have the habits we need. But I have to admit to being baffled and dismayed by these new challenges. They aren't anything the other parents we know haven't been dealing with for a long time, but they're pretty new to us, and I don't deal well with, for example, challenges around food. It makes me crazy when he asks for a specific food only to reject it, or when he refuses to eat anything and then has a fit because I won't give him crackers. We are going to be phasing out all cracker snacks in the hopes of actually getting some nutrients into him during this period, but I swear I got maybe two bites of veg into him and maybe ditto of protein over the last two weeks. Gah.
We're working, also, on diction and on rhetoric. I never thought I'd be one of those moms who doesn't let their kid say "yeah" and insists on "Yes," but he picked up a weird quirk recently where he says "yawwwww" or even "nyoaaww" instead of "yeah" and I can't tell whether he means yes or no, so we're trying to train him out of it and into "yes." And we're trying to talk about asking nicely, instead of demanding, so "Grandpa, you listen!" or "Mommy come here now!" become, "can you please listen?" and "can you please come here?" "I want milk!" becomes, "can I have milk please?" and even "I don't like to eat the spinach!" becomes, "no, thank you." It's a work in progress, but he is still, at heart, a friendly and loving kid, so he kind of gets it. When people come in the door he often runs to greet them with a "[Name]! Good to see you!" and a huge hug.
He's started having trouble separating at preschool again, and crying at bedtime, but I think that sort of stuff is par for a developmental spurt. He's latched on to his blanky, which has always been a nice-thing-to-have, as a real security object. He's trying out words about emotions, like "happy" and "frustrated" and "scared" and "angry" and "sad," though they're often attributed to garbage trucks or trains and because of his why/where confusion, we can't really elicit the reasoning behind the moods yet. He's started to tell more elaborate stories, and more fanciful stories, too. And he's figured out delaying tactics, so bedtime is now a hilarious series of rapid-fire semi-tearful requests for things that don't involve being in his crib. Oh, toddler. So transparent.
Power struggles and negotiations: the upcoming themes of 2009 Squidbits, I'm afraid. I'm about to take a long weekend in L.A. with him, and Himself isn't coming, so I anticipate being put to many a test of my patience. I don't mean to make it sound like it's all trials; it's not. This evening, in between an argument about chicken for dinner and a time-out for climbing on me when he'd been repeatedly asked not to, we went grocery shopping, talked about our days, read books, ate dinner, talked about tractors, and watched a Dr. Seuss video on youtube. We're doing fine. It's just an adjustment.
He really enjoyed our holiday in Illinois, and the time with our friends and his whole extended family (minus one uncle), but he was also palpably glad to be home. And we're glad to be home with him, too. We curl up in the evening under the afghan my friend L. made for us and read about tractors and excavators and backhoes. We watch garbage trucks on youtube. We make pancakes and sing songs and play trains. It's cozy. I can't wait to have Christmas together this year; he's figured out about presents but he's not rabid about them, yet, and I'm hoping to get the tree tomorrow so we can decorate it in time.
Squid lines up his collection of die-cast cars on the coffee table
You may have noticed a marked decline in photographic quality over the last few months; Himself has asked me not to use his photos of the Squid on my blog. So you get my blurry snaps instead. Sorry, folks! My digital camera doesn't do very well indoors, and with the advent of colder days, we're not venturing out as much, but I'll do my best.
posted by The Stute Fish at 21:28
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