Time to find my Mommy britches

The time has come. He's gotten away with all kinds of stuff because, in my mind, he's too young to know what he's doing. And I keep telling myself that, even when he's standing in a chair and giving me that look that dares me to tell him to sit down. I tell him to sit down. But I ask nicely, and he takes longer and longer to comply. So today, I demanded that he sit down, and he looked at me like I'd grown another head. But he sat down.

His Daddy actually spanked him for this a few days ago. I wasn't dialed in to the fact that we were actually going to spank him, ever, so it took me completely by surprise when it happened. Dennis cried two little 'waah's and was over it. I cried for an hour. It was 3 little taps on his bottom, but it rocked my world.

I know we agreed that we were pro-spanking (umm, not each other) before Dennis was born. But now he's here, and he's so sweet, and I can't stand the thought of ever spanking him. I always thought that it would depend on the child--some only respond to spanking, and it doesn't work for other kids. What about just using positive reinforcement? Does that actually work? I know spanking is very controversial, and I still have emotional scars from the very few spankings I myself received as a child. David thinks it's hilarious that he can snap a belt and watch me cringe in terror, a trick he performed even tonight. For years he's tried this, and I still cringe every time.

Refusing to sit on his bottom in a chair is the worst thing he's done in all his 18 months, and he'll sit if you tell him to like you mean it. But I'm realizing that the time is coming quickly when we'll have to get all our discipline ducks in a row and agree on a strategy. Do we punish him for throwing down his plate after a meal? For playing in the toilet? How do we distinguish what's simply toddler curiosity as opposed to deliberate bad behavior? Is he old enough for deliberate bad behavior? I really don't think so. And I really hope that in a couple of months, I won't be blogging about how he has completely run over me.

This is hard. I absolutely cannot stomach the idea of ever hurting him, even slightly, even for his own good. Not when he looks at me with those huge trusting blue eyes, and when I'm the one he runs to in distress, the one who makes it better. Crap. I might be raising a real Momma's boy. Or maybe I'm doing the right thing. How the heck do I know what's right? You can rest assured that I won't be spanking him myself, at least for now.

See the picture. He's climbed up a chair to turn on the lamp. Is this bad? Not really--he wanted to examine how the lamp worked. But he's not sitting down in the chair, is he? He got into this position when he was alone in his room, and I came in to find this. Instead of reprimanding him, I took a picture. Perhaps I really don't have a clue.

where's the baby?

Looking at Dennis today, it was hard to see any signs of babyhood. He's a little boy now. He gets taller every day and he's losing some of that baby roundness from all over. He's still cute as can be, but it's hard to reconcile this attractive little boy with that totally adorable chunk of baby that he was just months ago. All part of the growing up process, I presume.

This was an almost back-to-normal day for Dennis after all the weekend partying. He played with his Daddy while Mommy went to the gym and the bank, then he and I went to meet his Gran and Great-Granny for a little shopping at the flea market. Dennis scored a nice table and 2 chairs for his playroom, just his size. He enjoyed another buffet lunch at Shoney's (2 lunches in a row there) before his Great-Granny left to go back home to Dothan. He settled in for a 2 & 1/2 hour afternoon nap, stopped by to visit Gran & Pop for a while, and then went to do some shopping with Mommy and Daddy in Prattville. He had lots of fun shopping, pointing things out and identifying them to us in his own language. And he fell asleep hard in the car, exhausted from another long day.

The most fun thing from today? Tossing his car into Gran's pond. He actually turned it upside down and sent it over the waterfall. Any occupants inside would have drowned before help could reach them (I had to climb the side a bit before I could reach the car to lift it out). He also enjoyed hooting at the plastic owl standing guard over the pond. Just another day in the life of Dennis!

I love my Godfather

Dennis is very fortunate to have a very special person in his life, and that person is his Godfather, who also happens to be my uncle and his great-uncle. Uncle Denny sure got a lot of attention from Dennis this weekend--he wanted to be wherever his uncle was and he wanted to climb in his lap constantly. He loves Uncle Denny very much, but he also happens to love the fact that Uncle Denny always carries a nice ink pen in his pocket, a pen that's easily accessible to little hands. Dennis must have grabbed that pen two dozen times in the past couple of days. He didn't write with it; he just ran around the house with it, holding it alternately in his hands or mouth. Today he even started bringing the pen back to Uncle Denny when he was finished with it.

One of the pictures shows Dennis with the painting that he did for Uncle Denny's birthday gift. We celebrated our birthdays together this year and I hope we'll do so again and again in the coming years. Dennis painted the picture with his fingers and his technique has really changed since the last painting he did. He's a bit more minimalist these days, and he actually used his fingers to move the paint along the canvas this time rather than just dabbing it like before. He worked in acrylic paint again this time (it washes off baby hands with water), and he tried his best to taste each color. He chose which colors to use and where to put them, and it turned out to be a pretty interesting masterpiece. I wonder if we have a budding artist in the family. Or maybe he just enjoyed the opportunity to get messy...

Happy Birthday, Mommy

Dennis could not have been more charming or fun or cute or wonderful than he was today. We spent the day at the lake house with Granny and Uncle Denny and Gran, and later in the evening, Becky & Bob, and Dave, Ellen, and Chloe came to celebrate as well. We had an incredible dinner of fried catfish, all caught there at the lake house by the master fishermen in the family.

Dennis and Chloe enjoyed playing together and delighted all of us with their antics. Dennis said so many new words that I've completely lost count of all the things he knows how to say. And Chloe is growing so fast, and she's getting the cutest little curls in the hair on the nape of her neck. They don't look like babies anymore, not at all. They are real little people, with real opinions and real personalities. And they are so darned cute!

So I'm another year older now, and my life is so full and rich now that I can hardly believe it. I am so thankful for the blessings in my life--my wonderful family and incredible caring friends. It was a great birthday.

big talker

Dennis discovered the art of true phone conversation today. For months he's been putting his play phones up to his ear (usually backwards) and walking around and talking gibberish. Today I saw him walking around with the real phone and doing the same thing. Somewhat later, after his nap when he was a little upset at waking up, he kept walking back and forth to the doors and looking out and calling for "Da-da". He was inconsolable, and just when I picked up the phone to call his Daddy so he could hear his voice, the phone rang. It was David, and I explained to him that Dennis was asking for him, and then I put the phone on speaker and handed it to Dennis. He walked around with it up to his ear, chattering away to his Daddy. It was, hands down, the cutest thing Mom and I had ever seen. They had a very long conversation, occasionally punctuated by Dennis pressing some buttons on the phone and then returning to the call.

A couple of hours later, he wanted the phone again, so we called his Pop and let Dennis talk to him. It was a repeat performance and it thrilled Dad to hear what all Dennis had to say. Not that we understood what all Dennis had to say, mind you, but it was sure fun to listen to. Again, much later, we decided to call Uncle Denny (who was on his way here to visit) to let him know that Dennis had just licked the mayonnaise off his piece of sandwich bread (something Uncle Denny was known for as a kid). Dennis got the phone again and had another conversation, this time with a lot more button pushing. What was so cute about it was the way he walked around and around the lake house with the phone up to his ear, talking away and then pausing to listen and then talking again.

In other news, Froggy took his first ever swim in the toilet today. He recovered just fine and is sleeping underneath Dennis right now. They looked cozy when I went in to check on them a few minutes ago. Dennis felt fine all day, no sign of fever, no sign of illness. It must have been another mystery fever yesterday or it was tooth related. Thank goodness all seems well.

that nice couple at the lake

Dennis and I headed to the lake house today to make sure everything is in tip top shape for the company coming over the weekend. He took several naps and vegged out on the couch for hours, which is not like him. We were up late last night listening to him toss and turn and whine and brought him to bed with us. At 5:40 this morning, he rolled over onto me and nearly set me on fire, so we took his temperature and discovered a slight fever. We dosed him with meds and he went back to sleep fitfully, and in the morning he was his usual self. He seemed tired this afternoon, which was not surprising since he didn't sleep well, and I kept checking him. Gran and I both checked him and he was fine, and then 45 minutes later, he felt really hot. Temperature was 103 then. I dosed him with tylenol and he dozed and lazed around and when we got home he seemed fine. No other symptoms except for a sneeze, but we're all sneezing in this house this week. I got on the hotline to Ellen to find out if we should be expecting more teeth in now, and it's entirely possible. But just in case, we gave him a baby dose of Airborne tonight and will keep it up according to the package directions so that we can ward off anything that isn't teething related.

Before the fever hit, we were all playing on the screened porch, and a pair of mallard ducks swam up to the dock below. Gran went down first with a handful of potato chips and Dennis and I followed her. He enjoyed watching the ducks very much. He waved to them and talked to them and kept pointing and telling me "duck". Then he pointed to the water and said "cookie?" and I explained that we were feeding them chips, not cookies. I know chips are probably not located anywhere on the mallard duck RDA food pyramid, but we wanted to attract them close enough so that Dennis could see them. I pointed out the distinction between the boy duck and the girl duck (the color, of course), but I think he's just a little young to understand that. The ducks swam away and we went back up to the porch and we saw them later visiting the neighbor's reedy area and doing a little fishing. They seemed like a friendly pair and we didn't see any other ducks anywhere in the vicinity, so I wonder if they've taken up residence nearby. I hope so, as mallards are neat and I like the soft chatter they make (as opposed to the geese and their much louder volume). We also saw a flock of Canada geese flying by at sunset, low and close to the water--so beautiful in their perfect formation!

Tonight Dennis seemed fine and happy, but I know I'll be checking in on him all night. I just hope he sleeps a little better tonight. He is drooling a good bit, so I know his teeth hurt some, and I gave him some motrin just before he turned in. That should help. These random weird fevers always scare me, and I know he's probably just fine, but I'll be glad when tomorrow comes and shows me how he's doing.

Three nights in a row he's wanted to sit on his potty and read books, so we've obliged him. He's not deposited anything in the potty as of yet, but he's very interested in it, and we're happy to indulge his interest. I bought him the Elmo's Potty Time video, and he loved watching that, so we'll add it to his learning movie rotation. He has actually learned some things from Elmo, so even though I previously found Elmo extremely annoying, he's growing on me. Dennis really likes Elmo, but he has recently discovered Ernie and talks about him just as much as Elmo. Ernie was my favorite Sesame Street character when I was younger, but I really like Oscar the Grouch the best now. He reminds me of someone special that I know.

doing toddler things...

What a beautiful sunny fall day it was here today! Dennis enjoyed running and playing in Gran's garden several times. The first time was when I dropped him off with Pop on my way to the gym. Pop took him out into the garden and gave him a wagon ride. After the ride, Dennis went over to hoot at their plastic owl (to keep the hawks away from the koi in the pond), and in a surprise move, picked up the owl and chucked it into the pond. While Pop was fishing it out, Dennis took his toy car up to the waterfall and tried to see if it would float down. When it didn't, he threw it into the pond as well.

After lunch, Gran and I took him back out there, and he identified things to me by name. He pointed to the owl and said owl and then said "who who who". He pointed to the waterfall and said "waarful" and then to the water and said "wa-err". He showed me flowers and a chair and some rocks as well, naming each thing correctly. Then, just as I was reflecting on what a brilliant child he is, he shoved a handful of pea gravel into his mouth and took off. He spit it out as I caught up to him, of course, but this reassured me that he is, in fact, a normal toddler. Not that toddlers are normal in any way...

This morning it was quiet in his room as I was cooking breakfast, so I went in to see what he was up to. He was sitting in the big rocking chair in his room, reading a Bob the Builder book. I had to look for a few minutes before I realized what was so interesting about finding him that way. The lamp above the chair was on. I still can't fathom how he managed to turn it on, because he would have had to climb up the back of the chair and reach pretty high and turn a twist knob. But he clearly did it, because we were the only two humans in the house and the dog was in the kitchen with me. I guess he decided he needed a little more light to read by.

Tonight as I was getting him ready for bed, my stomach growled, and it was kind of a loud moaning sound. Dennis didn't respond right away so I figured he ignored it or didn't hear it, and then suddenly he looked me straight in the eye and said "moooooooo" very loudly. I don't know what else I could say that could possibly top that, so I'll sign off here!

The picture was snapped as he was rapidly driving a car toward the camera--very rapidly--so it's really only a half shot of him. But you get the idea.