Vegan Goodness:
Today we ate . . .
- Breakfast: Blueberry smoothies and cream of wheat for Mom and LP
- Lunch: Mom made crepes filled with avocado and tofutti cream cheese, which she and LP enjoyed along with apples and almonds. The G-man was feeling under the weather so he had some ramen (which we keep on hand for just such occasions)
- Dinner: Potato Leek soup. Then Mom and Dad had some chocolate mint cookies after the kids were in bed. And Mom drank copious amounts of red wine. It was that kind of day (well, really, just that kind of afternoon).
Money Matters:
Today we spent the following:
- $43.54 on a few hardware store items (including a potential X-mas present for LP! Shhhhh . . . )
Tuesday Toddler Update:
Today I had an interesting interaction with LP. I had left baby IP sitting up in the living room, surrounded by pillows while I went to go take care of a dirty diaper. LP was in the living room as well. While I was taking care of the diaper in the laundry room I heard IP start to cry – not her “I’m in pain!” cry, but just her annoyed cry. I went back in and saw that she had tipped over onto the pillows, which is not unusual. However, LP was curled up on a corner of the couch, looking rather guilty. I picked the baby up and asked LP what happened. He just looked at me and said “nothing!!” Talk about a word that gets the mom-radar going! Everyone was fine, no one was hurt, and I assumed that LP hadn’t done anything malicious. I crouched down in front of him and said “Can you tell Mommy what happened?” This time he shook his head no. At this point I wasn’t super worried about what had happened. Curious and slightly concerned yes, but not seriously worried. And IP was getting fussy. So I just told LP “You can always tell me when something happens, even if it is something bad. If you tell me things we can always talk about them, because I know you would never do anything bad to your baby sister on purpose.” Then, I left it at that.
About 10 minutes later I was in the kitchen, cleaning up for lunch, when LP came and said something that I couldn’t understand. I turned off the sink and bent down so I could hear him. He repeated “Goo goo tell Mommy now.” It took me a minute to figure out what the heck he was talking about. Apparently he was ready to disclose all he knew about the “living room/tipping baby incident.” He explained that he had tried to give baby IP a hug and then she had tipped over. I gave him a hug and kiss and told him “thank you for telling me.” I also told him that he shouldn’t hug IP when Mommy and Daddy weren’t in the room, and the G-man chimed in a said LP could always just go make funny faces for her instead of giving her hugs. LP seemed to get it (as much as an almost three-year-old gets anything) and all was well.
I was so, so comforted by the fact that LP finally told me what had happened. When I first asked him about it I was thinking I should have pushed more. I even considered threatening a time-out unless he told me. But the more I thought about it (and the more the baby fussed) I realized that threatening might get short-term results, but it certainly won’t build long-term ones. So, I let it go, hoping that he would trust me enough to tell me next time something happened, or at least just hoping that I wasn’t letting him “get away” with something this time. The fact that he told me later made me feel like somehow one of these impromptu parenting decisions actually worked!
I’m realizing how much I want my child to trust me. Not like me, or think I’m cool, but actually trust me. I want him to know that he can tell me and his dad if when he screws up. I want him to know that we will love him, no matter what. And I want him to be strong enough to tell the truth, even when it might will get him in some kind of trouble. It seems like a lot to put in a little guy like LP, but I hope that today was a positive step. Unless, of course, he used the time to come up with a plausible story. But I think it was the truth.
Of course, we also have moments like these: At dinner he wanted toast with his soup. He asked for toast. We said “you need to wait.” So he waited. A whole 0.5 seconds before he asked again and again. We told him to stop asking. So, he waited 1 whole second before asking again The child who managed to maturely handle the re-telling of the baby-tipping incident got a time-out over toast. I repeat. Toast. Yeah, he’s still two.
