Sunday, June 20, 2010

Choices, choices...

OK, so I'll admit, I pad the questions I ask my toddler so I'll get the answers I want.

If he is being punished for hitting, and I'm holding him with his arms down, I'll ask, "Are you going to stop hitting Mommy?" because he usually answers, "Nkay". And then I can let him down.

And I just talked about the milk vs. bed choices I give him. But tonight he surprised me. After storytime he gave me a kiss, then was reaching for the crib, so I asked if he wanted to go to bed and he says, "Nkay".

I just put him down, without nursing for the first time. Well, we tried it awhile ago, but it didn't take, so for the first time in a long time. He did take a late nap, and so dinner was late, and he was getting sleepy.

But I was very sad to have to leave the room without our play/nurse/bonding time. It's one of the few times during the day when we have each other's undivided attention. And I usually review new words he's learned during the day.

So it's like there's something in my routine that's missing. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of nursing, and maybe tomorrow he'll ask for milk again and I'll have my baby time back. I'll just have to see.

My baby is growing up. If only there were a way to keep him little longer.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

First Complete Sentence!!!

Well, Little M finally learned the word "No", and it wasn't the terrible, horrible, awful thing I'd thought it would be. When he does say it, it's usually in response to a question, and at least he now has another option to, "Nkay". So he gets to actually express an opinion and have choices. All good things for a toddler.

This evening, after we'd done bath time and read the bedtime story, we moved on to the question and answer portion of the evening.

"Do you want some milk?" - does he want to nurse before bed.
"No."
"OK, do you want to go to sleep?" - done with the sign for sleep.
"No."
"OK, then do you want some milk?"
"Nkay". - he has figured out that those are the options, milk or bed. He has always chosen milk so far.

So I start nursing him, and we do some things that I only really do at bedtime, like "This little piggy went to market." Probably not the best for calming him down, since I get to tickle him a the end, but he enjoys it, and I do too.

We also practice all of the signs he knows. So far the list includes: all done, more, go to sleep, please, thank you, cookie, milk, and a few other random ones. I asked him to do "all done", then "more". Then I asked him to do "cookie", and after he did cookie it looked like he was doing the sign for "milk" with one of his hands, so I said, "Oh, you're doing milk, I see that, good job."

He breaks the seal and stops nursing to say to me, "No, it's cookie."

I laughed for a good 5 minutes! It was so completely adorable, my little comedian. And of course, since I was laughing he was laughing, so I had to calm down before we could go back to nursing. How sweet that his first sentence was correcting Mommy on what sign he was practicing.

I look forward to all the other funny and insightful things he'll say.