Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Quilted Quicker Picker Upper (aka Independence)

I'm a delinquent poster...

Sam has joined the ranks of "I'll do it myself, thanks".  This morning he would NOT eat his oatmeal.  That is, until I relinquished control of the spoon.  A little light bulb went off above his head.  For the next 30 minutes Sam laboriously dipped his spoon in the cereal then licked off the miniscule amount he managed to get to stick to the spoon.  Oh, but it was FUN.  Once he realized how painstaking it was to eat oatmeal speck by speck, he turned to his fingers as a much more useful and efficient dining instrument.

Fast forward 30 minutes or so...  Sam found one of his plastic cups in the cabinet.  Not a sippy, a "real" cup.  I, the obliging mother, assemble a sippy cup and fill it with water.  I mean, he must be thirsty, right?  Sam follows me with his big kid cup and holds it up to the fridge, right by the water dispenser.  Ohhhhhhhhhh... he wants his water in the real cup.  Great.  So, I put a splash of water (I've learned never to put more than a sip in a open cup with him).  Of course, we have had 3-4 "uh oh" moments resulting in said sip on the floor.  There was one successful swallow of water involved in this process.  Hey, batting .250 ain't terrible!

So, I'm resigned to the fact that I will be buying stock in Bounty.  Those paper towels really are the best.  Those quilts, they really absorb.  As we struggle with learning new tricks, there are bound to be messes.  This is clearly an important stage of development.  I can't be packing him sippy cups in his boxes for college, nor can I show up in the dining hall every morning to feed him oatmeal.  Why does this learning business have to be so darn messy?

A side note an and added bonus is that they must be teaching him to clean up in daycare.  The other day after he spilled some water on the floor, he pulled the dishrag off the stove and blotted up his mess.  Here's hoping that he learns the old adage "if you mess it up, clean it up".

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