bargaining

Swim class did not go quite as I hoped this morning. I peeked my head in once to see Dennis and another boy engaging in a splash war (much giggling) and then saw the instructors catch them at it and tell them to stop. I didn't watch after that. When I came in at the end, the instructors told us to work with the children this week in the tub, getting them to put their faces in the water and blow bubbles. And then Miss Donna (our instructor from Water Babies who remembered Dennis and recognized him right away--is this a good or bad thing?) told me that everything she asked Dennis to do, he told her "I can't!" and wouldn't. Ah, well. There's always next week. At the end of the class, he blew bubbles for me twice in the pool as I stood at the edge, but Miss Donna was looking away. We had a talk about trusting our teacher and trying things before we decided we couldn't do them, and we'll have that talk again next Saturday morning.

Today on our way home from the lake house, Dennis told me he didn't want to go home. I knew this was because he wanted to avoid nap time, but I played along and asked him what he wanted to do. He said "I want to go to Wal-Mart and look at the toys. First we can look at your toys, Mommy, and then we can look at my toys." I told him what a nice offer that was and he said "yes, we will look at your toys first--I love to help you shop, Mommy." We did indeed need a few things from Wal-Mart, and I called Daddy (following in his car) to inform him of our planned stop. The offer didn't hold true. While I was looking at 'my toys' (in this case, seeds and plants), Dennis became impatient and impossible, and he remained that way when we fetched our groceries. He never did get to look at his toys. He was upset by that fact, but he knows he's supposed to be good in order to look at them and he agreed that he had not been very nice. He yelled at us, told his Daddy to stop pushing the cart, told him "put that ham back right now, Daddy, it's Mommy's turn to shop." He did tell me he wanted to get flowers for Gran as we passed them, so I let him pick out a bouquet and take it to her on our way home. He ran to her door and said "look, Gran, I picked these out for you!". She was delighted and he was as well.