I never really thought much about having a little girl. As soon as I found out I was pregnant I knew it was a boy. Like deep in my bones knew, it was a boy. So I don't really know how I would have raised a girl, but I don't think (at this age imparticularly) I would do much different. I think kids develop their own interests and you sort of follow that. G is completely into trucks, cars, all things with wheels and balls. He is very much a little boy.
So there's lots of playing like a little boy would play. Lots of fort building (by me) and ball throwing and sitting outside and watching traffic and kicking sticks and leaves.
My living room is in constant chaos. There are toys in every room of this house and we
still can't find one of the cordless phones. He went through about a week where he was putting things in the trash can. I'm a bit afraid I might have missed the phone going in there.
He disappears into other rooms in the house and shuts the door. And then it gets quiet. Too quiet.
What is he doing in there? quiet. In his bedroom, he's playing with the dials on the two humidifiers (long story) or pulling all the diapers out of the closet. In my bedroom, he's emptying my bedside endtable. Why these two activities reoccur I will never understand.
He is emotional and gets frustrated when he tries to do something and it doesn't work. Like taking the football out of the toy box. It gets stuck 9 times out of 10 (because he doesn't open the box far enough) and he just sits there and whines pulling on it. He has gotten much better about saying help. Which sounds a bit too much like hell. But oh well.
At night (this has not ever happened at naptime) when he is ready for bed he'll come up to me and ask for a bath. And then he takes his medicine and I ask him if he's ready for bed and he says "yeah" and points at the crib. Such a far cry from where we were this time last year. This is partly his personality (I think he needs lots of sleep) but partly (mostly) it was my stubborn insistence on doing everything the same over and over again. It will be a long time before he can take a bath and not fall asleep afterwards. I rolled my eyes at the people that said
just be consistent, it'll work out. But they were right. Consistency paid off and he figured out what we were asking him to do and he now loves his crib. So much so I'm thinking we may never be able to put him in a toddler bed.
My kid is always dirty. I never fret about a dirty face or a dirty shirt. I don't care. If he's out in public I still don't care. Life's too short and him too messy to put him in a new outfit every time he gets dirty. I'm somewhat alone in this. Most people, I feel, do a better job of wiping faces and keeping their kiddos neat. I try to wipe his face but if I miss something, eh.
This is not to call myself a laid back mom. I am not. But I do think my life has been thrown into perspective. I do stress
way, way too much about what he eats and how he eats and how long he eats and how
much he eats. I'm trying the mantra: as long as he doesn't throw up ... he will eat what he needs. And as a friend of mine said, learning to eat when you're hungry and not when it's "time" is an important lesson too.
When he rides in the car, I trained him a long time ago to answer me when I asked him "are you okay,"and he says "yea." It used to be he'd just kind of grunt or say "oooh" or something. This was especially helpful when he was vomiting, because pulling over immediately is not always possible but you want to make sure the airways are clear. Now it's just pretty cute. I can ask him if he's okay and he says "yea".
We walk to the park now (on days when he naps too long and I need to add extra exhertion to wear him out) and he likes to stomp in the leaves. Then yesterday we went out back and there's a lot back there and he was tromping through those. I think he likes the satisfying crunch.
So the other day I was singing the abc's in the car and I noticed when I was finished he was trying to sing it too. He'd go through a bunch of sounds and then he'd clap when he was done, just like when I clap when we're done singing any song. Which is pretty funny. He claps at the end of every song now.
Another huge perk of staying home is I can go to the grocery store early when no one else is there. The benefit of this, beyond the obvious, is that G can walk with me and "help" me pick things out and put them in the cart, and not get run over by crazy people in a hurry. He's still too short to really throw it in the cart, but - and I thought this was pretty funny - I would hand him the item, he'd walk it to the cart, and then stand on tip toe to try and get it in the cart. When he would come up short, he'd settle for handing it to me to put it in. Every time this happened. We had about 20 items.
Every day little things happen and I store them away in my little brain. Every time he puts his little face up and purses his lips into a flat line (this means he wants a kiss) I die a little from the cuteness of it all. When he ate his yogurt with a spoon today and was actually trying to scoop all of it out. When he plays with the dog and throws the dog toy and squeals like crazy when she goes to get it. There are others. I can't think of them right now.
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