The Small Family     

First and foremost, happy Halloween! And happy anniversary to my mother-in-law and father-in-law, who’ve been married 40 years today! Pretty darn impressive, you two!!

Our week consisted mostly of doctor appointments--exciting! Nothing troublesome--just flu shots for Theo and me (Chris will probably tempt fate again this year), chiropractor appointments for Chris and me, and Zoe’s spaying. Zoe’s spaying went off without a hitch--she was back home the same day, although very quiet. By the next day she was a lot more active, and within a couple days, she was her usual hyper self. Actually, she’s been a bit of a turkey because we can’t take her for walks for another couple days, so she has all kinds of pent-up energy that she’s using to (a) terrorize Luna and (b) steal and chew up Theo’s toys. That pug is in desperate need of some outdoor exercise! Only a couple more days…

We had an eventful weekend, though. Saturday was a gloomy, rainy day, so we took Theo to the Children’s Museum of Stockton. It’s about an hour and 15 minutes away from us, but it’s worth the drive because, as Chris puts it, it’s the best “bang for your buck in children’s museums.” Indeed! It’s older than some and a little shabbier, but it’s HUGE, and for only $5/person, it provides hours of entertainment. Theo loves it because it’s almost all real stuff to explore--not so much toys. He likes toys as much as any kid, but what he really likes is being allowed to play with adult stuff. So to be able to play in a real police car, helicopter, fire engine, ambulance, etc. is pretty much heaven for him. We had one tired, happy little boy after that.

Saturday evening was Little Gym’s annual Halloween party, so we went to that for some free fun. Theo had a great time playing, as always, and it was so neat to see all the kids in costumes. I think some of my favorites were the ladybugs--there were several, and they were just adorable. The lions were very cute, too. I’m a sucker for animal costumes.

You’ll notice in the pictures that Theo accomplished walking across a rather high set of uneven parallel bars. He’s never seen any kids do this because he’s always in class with kids his own age, who haven’t tried this. But at the Halloween party, he spied some of the older kids doing it, so of course he had to try it, too. He was surprisingly agile given his bulky Mickey Mouse costume, and he had so much fun!

Sunday we tackled the ever-exciting task of cleaning the garage (woohoo!) before heading over to Janeane and Jason’s house to have dinner with them and take Theo trick-or-treating in their neighborhood with Emma and Jamie. For all the kids in our neighborhood, it is unbelievably dead on Halloween--no pun intended! There’s really no trick-or-treating, which is a shame. The past two years we’ve gone to the mall and had Theo trick-or-treat there, but obviously it’s closed this year, thanks to Mr. Piggee. So Janeane and Jason invited us over to trick-or-treat with them. Janeane made a yummy dinner of beef stew and Caesar salad, and we then headed out for some good old-fashioned trick-or-treating! We figured Theo would last maybe six or seven houses, but he was a trooper--I think he and Emma made it to at least 20 houses! We walked all over their neighborhood, hitting bunches of houses along the way. I was cracking up at first because Theo kept walking into people’s houses when they opened the door, as if he owned the place! But he soon got the hang of just getting his candy and saying thank you. He wasn’t quite as strong with saying, “Trick or treat,” though--often he would just announce, “Candy!” or “Treat!” or my personal favorite, “Feo!” (translate: Theo!). And when the unsuspecting people made the mistake of letting him select candy from the bowl, he would very politely take one candy…and then another…and then another…and then another. Ha! Kid after my own heart…. Luckily, he didn’t protest when I made him put some back.  We had a great time, and I think Theo was very much a fan of this holiday. Thanks, Janeane and Jason, for having us over!

In other news, Mr. Independence reached another potty milestone. As you likely know, he’s been using the potty exclusively (except overnight and during naps) for almost four months now, and surprisingly, we haven’t had the usual setbacks that I was expecting. Every few weeks he might have an “oops,” but I was really expecting a lot more than that. Anyway, the one thing he hadn’t yet mastered was exclusively using the big toilet, and for a very good reason: He’s physically too short to easily climb on it by himself! So we’ve been lifting him onto it, and if he goes potty on his own, as he often does, he’d just use his little child’s potty. But more and more he wants to use the big toilet, so I decided it was time to start phasing out the little potties in favor of the big toilet.

We have a child’s seat that fits on the big toilet, so I bought a second one for upstairs, along with a stool, and a few days ago, I began encouraging him to do the process on his own. Now, this is a slightly involved process: He has to go get the stool and put it in front of the toilet, place the child seat on top of the toilet, take his pants and underwear off, climb up on the toilet, and get turned around so he’s sitting correctly. Then he has to finish and climb off. So imagine my surprise when Friday, just a matter of days into working with him on this, he casually sauntered down the hall and disappeared into the bathroom. I assumed he was going in there to wash his hands, as he loves washing his hands and hadn’t mentioned anything about the potty. But then I noticed the water wasn’t coming on, so I snuck down the hall to investigate. Without any prompting at all, he had dragged the stool over to the toilet, put the child seat on the toilet, gotten his pants down (and they were jeans--difficult to pull off at his age!), and was attempting to climb onto the toilet on his own. I ended up helping him with that last part (he hasn’t yet figured out that it’s much easier to do if he stands backwards on the stool and slides backwards onto the toilet seat), and he promptly went. And actually, he’s been having some GI distress for about three weeks, so I was doubly amazed that he manage to hold that in while attempting to do the toilet process all on his own. Sorry--perhaps too much information, but I was just impressed. That kid just never ceases to amaze me….

I’ve been thinking lately about how much I love the age Theo’s at. Some people love, love, love tiny babies. Other people enjoy children more as they get a bit older. I can’t really speak past the age of 2 1/2, but I can say that this is my favorite age so far! It’s no great secret that the first six months of Theo’s life were rather rough for all three of us, but since then, I’ve found I’ve enjoyed every age--for different reasons. So here’s what I love about 2 1/2: I love that Theo’s imagination is boundless and that he is conversing with us instead of at us. Nowadays, he wants to discuss everything with us, from stoplights to dogs to his beloved “Yiddow Einsteins” (that’s “Little Einsteins” in Theo-speak). It really is fun to hear what he comes up with.

And his imagination is really blossoming. One thing that utterly charms me is that he has come up with his own nickname for Zoe: Mousey. I have no idea why he calls her this, but in his little imagination, Zoe has become a Mousey. And when he plays with his toys now, I see him using his imagination to come up with little scenarios. His tow-truck driver stops to eat a hamburger (“Oh my--yummy!”). In his kitchen he whips up chicken in the microwave, instead of just tossing the pots and pans around. And Zoe, his beloved “Mousey,” does silly things like eating cheese. All of this in his crazy, wonderful little brain…I just love it!

I also love the pure joy that he still has at this age. Little things delight him, and he’ll exclaim, “Oh my!” or “Fun place!” I dread the day that his little-boy joy in life is replaced by apathy or cynicism. Hopefully that is far in the future…I want this joy in life to last for as long as possible! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had the unbridled joy of a toddler?? I would like to live that way….

But lest you think it’s all joy and fun around here, let me assure you that he’s still a very typical 2 1/2 year old, with 2-1/2-year-old tantrums and such. However, we’re working on a new method of dealing with undesirable behavior that so far (fingers crossed!) seems to be working well. Traditional time outs really have no effect on Theo, nor does loss of privileges. He physically fights time outs, and for loss of privileges, he more or less laughs in our face. It seems that although he gets very upset if the dogs get corrected, he couldn’t care less if he gets corrected. In fact, he views it as a challenge, and the negative behavior then escalates. So I got to thinking about my goals in dealing with negative behaviors (such as swearing). Do I really want to punish him in the traditional sense if it’s not working to stop the behavior? Well, no--it seems pointless. But I do want to remove him from the situation and try to “redirect” his behavior. So, we’ve modified time outs to be more like a traditional “go to your room” strategy--only we don’t get angry and say, “Go sit there and think about what you’ve done!” or anything like that. Instead, we tell him calmly that he needs to settle down, so he’s going to go into his room until he can calm down. Then we put him in his room and close a baby gate in the doorway so that he can’t get out. And if he wants to play in there, we don’t stop him and insist that he’s being punished…we just go in the den (where he can see us from his room) and tell him that he needs to settle down, and when he can be calm, he’ll be able to come out. He usually protests for a minute or two, but then he starts playing quietly with his toys. And then we let him out after a minute or two. We figure this accomplishes a few goals: 1) It distracts him from whatever negative behavior he was engaging in; 2) It allows us to step back instead of trying to physically hold him on a time out, which was unbelievably frustrating and just resulted in more stress for any of us involved; 3) It lets him play independently, which I think is a great skill for him to develop.

I guess there are those who would say, “Well, how does he know he’s being punished?” or “How is that a punishment?” The truth is, he doesn’t like being put in his room--he wants to continue doing whatever he was doing before. So in that sense, he knows it’s a punishment. But Theo seems to react to traditional punishment by pushing our buttons as much as possible--I think he actually kind of likes the negative attention he gets. So this is a way that he doesn’t get what he wants (our attention) until he calms down…which is ultimately what we want from him. When he gets older and consequences mean more to him, I’m sure we’ll start using that to discourage negative behavior. But at this stage, since he couldn’t care less about punishment or consequences, it seems to make the most sense just to get him to mellow out…which a few minutes in his room, left to his own devices, seems to accomplish. At least so far. He’s 2 1/2, so I’m quite sure this will change by tomorrow. ;-)

It’s kind of an odd feeling to me, though. I grew up in a house where, if we misbehaved, we were punished. And I think Chris’s family was the same. It wasn’t as if either of us was unfairly punished by any means--it was just, “If you misbehave, you will get X, Y, or Z” punishment. So we approached parenting in the same way, once Theo was old enough to actually start understanding when he was misbehaving. But then we realized that Theo is a far different kid than either Chris or I was--at this stage, he sees discipline as a challenge, and he is determined to get the last word. (I saw a T-shirt the other day that describes his attitude exactly! It said, “Go ahead…count to three!” Boy, if that isn’t Theo, I don’t know what is.) I think both Chris and I respected punishment pretty well. Theo…not so much. At the gym playcare the other day, a little boy roughly Theo’s age was on time out for behaving badly. At one point he looked up at the playcare worker, and she said, “You’re still on time out for another minute!” and he just sat there and complied. I was shocked. He just sat there and complied. No way would Theo ever do that. Believe me, we have tried. Evidently there are some kids who will do that, but Theo isn’t one of them.

Neither Chris nor I is the type of parent to try to force a kid into a “one size fits all” mold, so we’ve decided to explore some parenting choices that, frankly, are rather unfamiliar to us. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, because I admit I rolled my eyes a bit when I heard about this “chill out” strategy. (There are few different names for it, but the idea is pretty much the same.) But then I had a kid who didn’t respond well to the traditional parenting strategies that we had grown up with, so….well, we’ll see how it goes! Theo’s actually a very good little boy who doesn’t often require discipline anyway--he’s pretty agreeable and cooperative much of time. But when he decides to misbehave, he does it with gusto--Theo being Theo, he does it 150%! There is no such thing as a mild tantrum with Theo…it’s all or nothing.  

It’s going to be funny if Chris and I have another child and it turns out to be very mellow and easygoing. I really don’t think we’ll know what to do with it!

So that about wraps up our week. Big plans for next weekend: We’re going down to San Francisco on Friday to have dinner with some of my coworkers, who are in town for the annual Audio Engineering Society convention (feel the excitement!). We got a good deal on a hotel in the city, so we’ll be staying overnight while Theo spends the night at Grandpa Tom and Grandma Kathy’s house. We’ll drive to San Jose to pick him up Saturday morning and go spend an hour or so at Jeremy and Monica’s wedding lunch (Chris’s cousin and his wife--they got married a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas) before heading back up to Sacramento to retrieve the dogs from the kennel before they close for the weekend. Should be fun!