Miscellaneous Moments

This is one of those wordy entries that is probably interesting only to grandparents and the like. You've been forewarned!

I was told that two-and-a-half starts to be a pretty fun age after the intense difficulty of (in my experience) 15 months to over two years and I'm starting to wonder if that is true. John is doing so many neat things these days and he isn't as immediately oppositional (meaning, the fastest way to get a one-year-old to do the opposite is to tell him to do something as opposed to distracting and redirecting him). I've had some moments lately that are interesting to me, especially in light of the fact that I've been incorporating some of Montessori's practical life exercises and teaching him to do new things himself for fewer than two weeks.

I've been trying hard to incorporate John's help into whatever I'm doing in the moment. If he's happily occupied elsewhere, that is great, but if he's being "pesky" then I try to involve him. One of his favorite phrases right now is "I do it myself!" so I'm trying to capitalize on that. For anything with which he wants help, I try to remember to get him to do as many steps as possible. For example, while writing this post he was trying to put on sneakers without socks and started whining piteously. I said, "Those need socks. Do you want to go get some socks and then I will help you?" And he promptly ran off to find socks.

When we came home from our weekend in Atlanta, John was making my unpacking task very difficult. So I began asking his help with unpacking. Very soon John was running back and forth. He'd say, "I need a job to do!" I'd hand him one item (to stretch out his occupation) and say, "This Lambie belongs on your bed!" or "These shoes belong in your shoe drawer!" And off he'd run to put them away. It was so great! I have visions of him helping me unload the dishwasher (which he used to do every morning as a one-year-old), putting away utensils, folding more laundry (socks, wash cloths). We've recently instituted a no-outdoor-shoes-in-the-house rule and John is becoming very good at taking off his shoes when we come home and putting them at one of the "shoe stations."

After initially wearing his work apron as a costume all the time, he's now getting with the program that putting on the work apron indicates that he's working. So he puts on his apron when he wants to sweep (and then he dumps the refuse in the kitchen garbage can) and then takes it off when he's done. Also, Montessori Method advocates that all of the children's belongings are available to him, but also instills a strong sense of order: the child gets out one activity at a time, then puts it away. (I know, moms of many are laughing right now.) After a week of my having a few lengthy "teaching moments" that John must put away his whisk and apron before he may play with something else, this morning I heard him say to himself, "I put away my tools!" Then he ran off and hung his whisk and apron before bumbling off to the den to the next thing. I'm still working on teaching him that his dishes and utensils in the drawer accessible to him are not for playing but are for eating.

The tiny chair-and-table experiment is showing interesting early results. This morning John preferred to sit at his table while Daddy and I sat at the kitchen table. To our amazement, John sat at his table quietly for a solid five minutes. He didn't leap around or come and go. He ate a new food (olive oil and rosemary flavored toast with cream cheese on it--normally he rejects any kind of toast) with gusto and asked for seconds. I will continue to observe.

Lately I've been thinking about how much John is observant now. I had a bit of a moral scare two nights ago. Chris was gone on a business trip and I was so very tired, so I indulged in watching some adult television in front of John ("Everyone Loves Raymond," which really is a junky show that disrespects men and uses coarse language and models a lot of yelling). (The standard practice here is that we never watch adult television in front of John and he's currently watching about 30 minutes per day of children's television.) I made it halfway through before my discomfort level rose so high that it overwhelmed my desire for some adult voices. I switched to letting John watch "Max and Ruby." When the episode was over, John began acting out everything that had happened in the show and is still acting it out a day later. That scared me. If he can remember so well from one watching and act it out, think how much bad content he absorbs when I expose him to it. The moral responsibility of parenthood feels overwhelming at times!

John also picks up our linguistic mannerisms. I remember as a child how often my dad replied to my lazy "hey" by saying, "Hay is for horses!" Now my lazy modern language is coming back to bite me. John says "hey" and "yeah" all the time throughout the day. It's not that those are purely bad, but they're so lazy and floppy linguistically, especially when we're hoping to raise children who say "yes, ma'am" and the like. But I can't get him to stop saying "hey" and "yeah" in half his sentences until I get them out of my language. That's a tall order for a thirtysomething adult, but I'm going to try!

Another example of observation was a story John acted out this morning. He was playing with his airplane. He showed me how the pilot climbed the ladder and sat in the pilot's seat. Then Daddy climbed the ladder and sat in a passenger's seat. "Daddy has his cell phone. Daddy has his luggage. Daddy has his ring." I asked him to repeat the last part, and he said it clearly. Then he reminded me how Daddy had forgotten his wedding ring (he took it off for a moment), left on his business trip, then he drove back and parked in the driveway where Mama took him his ring. It just shows what a first-time mother I am that I'm amazed that John paid attention to all that and remember a detail such as a ring several days later. What else is he hearing, seeing, and remembering that he just doesn't talk about?

This is a fun age and, I don't know about John, but I am learning so much!