Am I the only one who feels like I'm forever saying "no" to my kids, but Joshua in particular? I think it's partially his age where his yearning for independence, but lack of mental maturity makes the job of parenting especially important. As in, "No, you can't climb up on top of the table like that. You could fall." Or, "No, it's not a good idea to eat only Oreo cookies for breakfast." Or, "For Heaven sake child, do not stick that in your ear/nose/eye! Do you want to be deaf/blind/unable to smell forever?" I've read enough parenting books and magazine articles and blogs and websites to know that it's not good to tell a child "no" all the time. Some even take it so far as to say that for each time you say "no" you should say "yes" some magic number of times. But let's be real for a second. That doesn't work. There are times when "no" has to be the answer, because it just IS. In the words of my father, "It is what it is." And the answer is NO. No amount of rephrasing or repositioning or softening is going to change that.
Anyway, yesterday when I picked Joshua up from school, we came home so that I could feed Lauren. When the schedule works out, it's oh so much more efficient to feed her for 10-15 minutes as opposed to hooking up to the milking machine at the office for an hour or more to produce enough to replace the bottle we used. I'm blessed with the flexibility to do that, and from time to time, I do. (Added bonus is that I got to see a few minutes of my DVR'ed Young and the Restless...and holy smokes is THAT getting good!) When she was done eating, Joshua asked if he could please go to work with me. Normally, there's something scheduled for me that wouldn't be conducive to the involvement of a 3 year old. So my usual answer is "no". But yesterday, as "no" was rolling off my tongue, I found an opportunity to say "yes". And so we packed up and headed to work.
Joshua sat in my office and colored pictures of Snow White, the Wicked Queen and the Prince using every highlighter we could find in the four desks at the office. I loved watching him work, because just in the past few days, his pictures are starting to look like what he says they are. Faces are round with eyes and mouths. Houses are square. Watching the development right as it happens nearly blows me away. He talked to clients, pretended to talk on the phone, told me stories and had a snack. He was an angel. And we had a blast. It only took me 15 minutes this morning to return all of the office supplies to their rightful homes from what he got out yesterday. And it was so worth it.
Lauren got some alone time with Grandma, which was a good thing since everyone was a little on edge by her antics in the morning. Judy put her in the exersaucer so that she could let the dog out. She was no more than 2 feet from her when she heard a thud, followed by screaming. Lauren had flipped herself out of the saucer and landed on her head on the wood floor. She's fine. No bumps. No bleeding. Nothing that would lead us to believe she could have really hurt herself. But we're all a little nervous about where to put her now that she's getting mobile and is desperately trying to explore the world. She scoots around our living room floor like a champ...and when she finally figures out how to get up on her knees, she'll be a goner. (I'm not encouraging this AT ALL!) She's super strong and evidently has dreams of being a gymnast. We weren't sure how she managed this, so I put her back in the saucer, obviously staying right with her, last night. She immediately grabbed on to the side of the tray and had herself hanging over the side of it in no time flat. We raised the exersaucer last night, but that didn't seem to do the trick when I tried it with her again this morning. All we did was give her farther to fall. We also lowered her crib two positions to make sure she doesn't get any bright ideas in there.
It appears she may be the monkey of the family. Joshua, as active as he was, never tried to climb. He never stopped moving once he started, but climbing and catapulting himself over/out of things was never a concern. There's always a new adventure, isn't there? I suspect the pack & play is going to be making a reappearance from the depths of our baby furniture graveyard in the basement so that we at least have a safe place to put Lauren down if we need to.......until she learns to escape from that too.
I believe we should file this under the category, "Never A Dull Moment".
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