Nose bumps, kisses, and hugs

EM was taking little EC up the stairs tonight for a bath…at least, she was trying to; but it didn’t seem to be working. I was head-down in the kitchen, chopping something here and hitting buttons on the microwave there…dinner for adults comes after bath time and bed time. EC had been a little difficult today, refusing to follow directions to walk on the sidewalk, let EM wash her hands or put her in her chair, and had served a time-out for being particularly intransigent just before she ate her dinner. So I didn’t much pay attention to the difficulty she causing about getting up for her bath.

But it got very loud, and tears were flowing…so I looked out the kitchen door at her, and started listening. She was yelling something through the tears, which was nearly impossible to make out, but after a few repetitions I got it: “Nose bumps, kisses, and hugs!”

She was listing off the signs of affection we share before she goes to bed. Then I understood: she thought that she was being sent to bed, and that EM was denying her the chance to say a proper good-night to me. And, in a heart-warming moment, I realized that she was fighting, and fighting hard, to show me affection. Missing out on even one good-night hug was unacceptable in her little toddler world.

With that cleared up, she gave me five hugs and lots of extra kisses, and went happily off to bath and bed. And I was much happier all night too.

Poops in the potty

After we introduced little EC to the concept of pottying some months ago, it was a hit-and-miss thing whether she’d give us the chance to see that she needed it before it was just diaper-changing time. We even gave it up entirely in September while we were traveling, because who needs that drama? But having returned home and to a relatively normal schedule, we gave it a try again.

From the beginning we had used the strategy of sitting her down at the first sign of “necessity”, reading her books, and otherwise distracting her until she actually pooped. This was only marginally successful, because she would eventually tire of sitting there, or declare she didn’t need to go, or we’d get tired of yet again reading the same books over and over while waiting for her. That was just too frustrating all around. So instead, when we got back, I just started taking her clothes off at the first signs, and otherwise letting her continue running around—on the one condition that she stay off any absorbent surfaces like couches. It turns out that she has a fairly good sense of when things will go down, and for one reason or another (our previous disappointment a couple times that she’s let drop on the floor?) knows that she has to be properly positioned for the event. So after four or forty minutes—I never can predict—she’ll start panting, dancing, and running for the bathroom…and you know how the story goes. A couple times she has peed on the floor—she hasn’t figured out that part of the package yet—and once she only half made it (“hovering” already, at age two), but otherwise she has a clean record. And as of now, I haven’t changed a dirty diaper in a week or more.

So in a case of “second thing’s first”, we seem to be getting this part down, and then we’ll move on to number one. The training pants just showed up in the mail today.

Meow…what?

Little EC has a fun game that she likes to play almost every day at lunch. She spells out the rules for me:

Baby says “Meow”, and Daddy says “What!”

So we play. The game goes just as you might imagine that it would. Until she changes the rules:

Baby says “What!”, and Daddy says “Meow”

And so we play that way too.

I think one day she must have, unprompted, said “meow” to me, and I responded with an incredulous “What?”. She cracked up at the tone of my voice, and said it again…and I, enjoying her laugh, repeated myself too. And now, it’s our own little game.

I’ve always observed older kids play with one another, and marveled at how they spend so little time playing, and so much time spelling out the rules or the script by which they will play whatever game it is that they’re going to play. And I can see that in this house it’s starting now, at two years old.