Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Kids are truly amazing

Really, they are. I never thought parenthood could be so much fun. Sure there are days like ones back last week with The willful child. Then there are all the other ones. (Hoping the "other ones" continue to outnumber the ones where I scream.)

There seems to be a biting problem in Leif's class. So much so, that I received a call from daycare yesterday about it. Thankfully, it isn't Leif doing the biting, although I am starting to wish he would. Nope, he is on the receiving end and his arms look like hell for it. Three bites in two days. One that broke the skin. All three from different children.

His substitute teacher (his teacher is in India - I love her and miss her), told me yesterday on the phone that she thinks it is due to his freakishly strong grip. AB ate that comment up. He prides himself on his grip. When he shakes someone's hand I can expect a full report on whether or not the person is a wuss. *rolling eyes* Anyways, when another child comes to take Leif's "work" away from him, they can't just walk up and take it like with other kids. Nope, Leif hangs on for dear life and the other children resort to biting him to force him to release his freakishly strong grip. All of this happens in milliseconds before the teacher gets over to straighten out the fact that "this is Leif's work, when he is done with this work you can use it".

Seeing his bruised and battered arms yesterday just broke my heart. He tolerates it all quite well. Each teacher in the room has talked to me about it. So I do feel as though they are keeping an eye out for the triggers.

On another topic one of Leif's teachers last night commented to me how well Leif is doing with his manners. She said that just recently whenever a teacher gives him something he ALWAYS says "thank you" and gave me a verbal pat on the back for reinforcing this at home. I stood there shell shocked for a minute after she tells me this. We always say "thank you" to Leif and encourage him to say it, but I have never heard him say it. Never. Well good to know that it has been sinking in anyways!

We bought three goldfish last night. Leif is completely enamored. He stood and watched them for as long as he could last night. Their names are evidently "Ish", "Shishy" and the big one is "Dada". (Note that there is no "mama"? This needs to change.) This does jive, however, with the card he gave AB for his birthday this weekend, it has a big dog and a puppy on the front and Leif repeated to AB that the little dog was "da" (dog) and says "woof" and the big dog is "dada". So big things in relation to other similar beings are dada's.

This morning when I got Leif out of his crib I asked him, like I always do, "how are you doing this morning?" This morning he looked at me and said, "happy"! What could be better than knowing your child is happy? Not much.

The leaving for school in the morning process is now longer thanks to the ish. Leif had to say "bye bye shishies" to the fish about 8 times. Everytime I would coax him to walk off he would pull away and say "no no" and go back to the shishies. Finally I convinced him to go say "bye bye" to Winny. Which always is a process in itself, "bye bye", Leif looks at me and says "teet?" (treat). I hand Leif a dog treat, he gives it to Winny. We watch Winny "eat teet" and then "bye bye" again. He will again request a "teet", to which I say no and insist he say "bye bye". He does and then kisses her on the mouth. If she happens to turn her head or not lick back, he persists in getting a good, full on wet slobbery kiss from his dog. Awww. (Or ick depending on your perspective.)

This weekend was good. Leif was happy, a little mellow as he recovered from his cold. He loved playing on the slides at the park this weekend. Leif loves slides and after last weekend where there was a slide he could do all by himself or "no no by self", it was all we could do to convince him we needed to help. He wanted to go down the tall slides so badly, and not only that, but wanted to go down them standing up. Grey hairs? Popping up. We took him home and changed his pants, the slides were sopping wet from all the rain, but that didn't slow him down. Both days he had terrific naps. All was good and happy!

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