Squidbits

I am awakened each morning by the Squid, buried beneath his blankets, yelling through the door. "Excuuuuuuse me. Excuuuuuuuuuse me! Mooooommmmyyyyy! Mommy! Excuuuuuuse me!" Very polite, but it doesn't change the part where I have to wake up to go get him. Ugh. I am not a morning person.

"I'm hungry!" he says, when I try to haul him into the big bed for a few more moments of blissful, warm horizontality.

"Oh yeah? Well, I'm hungry too. I'm hungry for snuggles!" I say.

"I'm not hungry for snuggles! I'm hungry for breakfast!" he says, kicking me and squirming until I tell him to get out of the bed, then running for the kitchen. "Come on, Mommy!"


DONNIT DONNIT

He talks about bad guys and fighting a lot. It's that age. "An' then he FIGHTS the bad guy an' he WHACKS him an' they FIGHT each other!" is a typical excited recounting of a story or movie or imaginary play sequence at school. He's also interested in dying - not in any existential sense, just in a "thing people do" way, and he talks about it a lot. "I'm dead," he says, lolling in his carseat with eyes closed. "I died." I try to not make a big deal about it by telling him dryly that that's too bad, and pointing out that most people don't keep talking after they expire.


We had our backyard re-done and this is the new fountain. Essentially, we got it just so he could have a water feature to play with. He loves it.

Potty training is going remarkably well, knock on wood. We're down to an accident every other day or so. It was a rough start - a very rough start - but he caught on quickly. He gets a star for his "good job" card every time he walks to the potty on his own big boy feet without fussing, and a gummi bear every time he uses it successfully. Twenty stars gets him a model car - he saves them up until he has enough, and then "pays" the clerk with the card of stars at the store, while I slip them my credit card under the guise of paying for something else. Economics and potty training, an integrated process!

For a while, I had him on a kitchen timer, and just made him go every half-hour. That worked fine for a few weeks, until he started refusing to go (even if he had to) because "the timer didn't go off yet." I told him that the timer was just a reminder and he needed to listen to his body. "Your body is the real timer," I told him. I weaned him off the kitchen timer, then, unless we were out and about or doing something especially exciting (he ignores his body when what he's doing is more fun than potty). And it more or less works! "My real timer is telling me I have to go pee," he said last night, and ran for the potty. Hurray! Some days are still better than others, and I don't anticipate having him out of diapers at night for quite some time yet, but on the whole I am very pleased and proud.


With the tower crane he got with "good job" potty stars!

I was solo parenting for the bulk of the last month, and we did something we've just started recently for when one of us is away. Himself wrote (email) letters to the Squid that I could then read to him at night. He attached photos, too, and the Squid was fascinated. One was of a German sandbox with toys, and every night, when I read him that letter (because of course he wanted all the letters each night, not just one) he would ask, "What is that toy? Can I go to Germany and play with it in that sandbox?" There you have it - the joys of international travel from the 3-year-old perspective. Going new and exciting places and ... doing more or less what you do at home, only with new toys. Actually, I know a lot of adults who travel like that too.


The sandbox is still a big hit.

I'm trying to wean him off movies, but it's hard when I'm solo parenting. Sometimes a movie is the only way I can get a shower, make dinner, or take care of other tasks. I ended up going out to eat with him a lot and spending evenings at the library, the park, swimming lessons, anywhere that wasn't home with the potential of a movie, because he always asked to watch one, and he started this thing where he would either burst into tears when I denied him - real tears - or if I gave him a movie, burst into tears and throw himself on the ground when it ended and I refused him another.

I tried getting promises of good behavior, but he is just too young for it. He can do it the other way around, for short-term things - behave in order to get a treat - but he can't promise future good behavior for a treat now. "Movies make you fussy," I told him. "If I give you a movie, can you promise no fussing afterward, when I turn it off and it's time for bed?"

"Movies don't make me fussy any more," he said (contradicting very recent evidence). "I promise, no fussing."

Later, grimly hauling a yowling, tear-stained young man off to brush his teeth, I reminded him. "Remember how you said movies didn't make you fussy, and you promised no fuss when it ended?"

Sniffle, sniffle. "Yeah."

"So I gave you a movie, but what happened after?"

Sniffle. "I threw a fit."

Oh, well. Now I know better than to try the "If I X, will you Y" construction with him. Maybe someday.


He likes it when we draw aminals in the condensation on the shower doors. He plays artistic director. This is "A lion! With a BIIIIG SHARK eating it up!"

We've had a lot of concern about other people's behavior lately. "Katie said I'm not a big boy anymore." "Ellison's not eating his breakfast." I tell him, "I don't care what Katie says. You know you're a big boy," and "Ellison's behavior is not your problem. Eat your own breakfast and stop paying attention to him." But tattling is here, I'm afraid, for the predictable future. "I'm telling on ya!" he says to me, when I do something he doesn't like. "I'm telling Daddy!" He and the other kids at school tattle on one another to the teachers all the time. I don't think I ever want to tell him, "just ignore them and they'll go away," because I don't believe it's true. But I feel myself skirting around the edges of it, as I tell him to walk away from conflict rather than engaging or escalating, and to discount Katie's mean words.

It's a hard one, and I wrestle with it myself still. When someone behaves in a way I don't like, how do I respond? Or is it better to remove myself? How can I hold other people accountable for their actions without letting them impact me negatively? Honestly, if someone is rude to me, I gauge how much I care about their opinion and how much I need their future goodwill and either ignore, deflect, or strike back. But I don't think that's a good strategy to teach a preschooler when you're trying to tell him that it's not okay to hit someone just because they took the toy you were playing with.


I didn't do this; he totally had the idea all on his own. But as you can see, I am raising him up right.

He has asked for his first pet. A hamster? No. A puppy? No. A kitten? No.

"Can we have a cow at our house?" he said one day.

"No, cows take a lot of space. Our yard isn't big enough for a cow."

"Yes it is. It could nibble on the grass!"

And again yesterday, driving past a house on our way to preschool that keeps a horse trailer parked outside: "Their house is too small for a horse. Maybe our house is not too small?"

Dream on, kiddo.