Asher’s Daily Time Out

Yesterday, you had THREE time outs. I don’t know if this proves I have no idea how to parent, or you’re learning this thing called “boundaries”.

So, yesterday morning, we started off with the heater again first thing. I think you may have been in time out within 10 minutes of getting out of your crib. This time, I didn’t sit down, I pretended to fold clothes and tidy your room while keeping one eye on you. You ended up laying on the floor sucking your thumb for a minute and a half.

Then I went to change your diaper on the changing table and you started squirming, kicking and trying to flip around. You haven’t done this with me in quite a while. It could be that time I caught you mid-air after you went ass-over-tits and it scared us both pretty bad. But, yesterday, you thought you’d try your luck again. And then you found yourself naked in the corner in a time out. I had to do everything I could to not laugh out loud. At one point during your time out, I found you sitting there playing with your penis, which made me think think that perhaps this particular lesson had been lost. Either way, I’m really proud of you. When I put you back on the changing table, you didn’t move at all.

And, I’m pretty proud of me, too. I was able to work the words ass, tits and penis into one blog entry. Well done!

Asher’s First Time Out

Wednesday marked yet another first in your life. Mommy had to do this weird thing called discipline. I’ll have to read more about it, but from what I understand, it starts out small and as you get older, you start to hate me.

Alyssa and I were talking that you seem to know one thing that pushes my buttons, her buttons and Daddy’s buttons. For me, you wake up in the morning and start messing with the dials on your radiant heater. You’ve been told many times that it’s “hot” and shouldn’t be touched under any circumstances. It used to be that this was enough to make you fear it; if you even came close to it, you’d tuck your arms in tight and side-step around it. At one point, you realized that the front of the heater wasn’t hot, and Mommy got a funny look on her face when you touched it.

So, on Wednesday, you touched the knobs, Mommy said “no” and you touched them again. Mommy came up, looked you in the face and said “no, you don’t touch”… and to Mommy’s amazement, you actually pushed her hands away and with a little shit-eating grin, went for the knobs. So, I picked you up, stood you in the corner and put you in a time out.

I didn’t think you’d get it, but you did. You were quite upset and your bottom lip stuck out immediately. I was sitting a few feet away and first you flung yourself at me, screaming “whee!!!” to see if I would smile, but I just picked you up and stuck you against the wall again. Next, your lap seeking butt came to sit in my lap. But, I picked you up and put you against the wall. After about 30 seconds, you got it, sat down and sucked your thumb.

It was a whole minute and a half. And for the both of us, I think we used that time to realize that the game just changed.

The Amazing Collapsible Baby

I know you didn’t invent this little trick. Babies for centuries have had the unique ability to turn from human form to something similar to wet cement. I know your partially made of rubber – just by watching you bounce off the walls and floors every day. But, I must admit, I cannot comprehend what goes on with your bones, your organs, your complete anatomy.

Of course, you pull this little trick out of your bag when you don’t want to do something, go somewhere, etc. Which, if you think about it, is understandable. You’re still small enough that we can just pick you up and take you places, you can’t quite communicate fully to say “get your hands off me,” so we’ve really left you with no choice. The one way to exert yourself is to simply collapse and slither right out of our fingers.

Now that I think about it, I have to honestly say, I want to figure out how to do this as an adult. Since no one is picking me up to take me places, turning into liquid and collapsing on the floor is really not an option. So, the question remains, what’s the email equivalant?

Creative Thwart

It’s really no secret that Mommy and Daddy can’t wait to color in coloring books. Some may even think that it’s the #1 reason we had you, which of course isn’t the case. We had you because eventually you’ll mow the lawn.

To further our cause, we prematurely sat you down with fingerpaints at 12 months (recommended age is 18), crayons at 12 months (recommended age is 18) and now our latest venture, The Aqua Doodle (recommended age 2+ years). Some would think that we are gluttons for punishment. We like to think of it as optimistic.

The first thing you did when I opened up the Aqua Doodle box, pulled out the fancy Aqua Doodle mat and filled up the miraculous Aqua Doodle pen is proceed to suck all the water out of the pen. The other thing we’ve noticed is you have a fascination for how things go together. When it comes to fingerpaints, you could care less about the paints and more about the cap on the bottle; how it opens and shuts. Hand you a marker and instead of doodling on some paper, you just want to take the cap on and off, on and off, on and off, while muttering “cap cap cap.” This has lead us to believe that maybe, against all odds, you’re going to grow up to be an… engineer.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Your Aunt Lara just sent this photo from Christmas, just to drive home my point:

Your Happy Place

When Mommy, Daddy or Alyssa upset you horribly by doing things such as: trying to feed you meat, saying no to running around without the lid on your sippy cup, throwing your books, or other horrible atrocities, you close your eyes and go to your Happy Place.

It really is pretty much what it sounds like. Say Mommy said “No Asher, Mommy holds the bubble jar – you put the cap on,” well that pretty much puts a kink in your plans. Your idea of fun would be to grab the open jar of bubbles, run around the house trying to screw the cap back on. And, it’s so totally mean of me to say no to this, that you will shut your eyes as tight as you can, take a deep breath and wait a moment. It’s almost like you’re mentally saying to yourself “She did NOT just tell me no, she did NOT just tell me no.” Then you’ll open your eyes and try again. Each time Mommy says no, your soothing breath in gets a little more exaggerated. And if you continue get the answer “no”, then you try to change the subject. You open your eyes, then point to my ear and say “ear” in a really cheerful voice. Maybe throw in a little giggle.

I keep imagining you as a teenager, still going to your happy place when someone of authority says “no” to you. Just please promise me you’ll point to something else besides the principal’s ear.

Chores

Now that you’re getting older, you actually recognize certain phrases and follow certain commands. Things like “put the hat on your head” and “bring Mommy a book to read”. We’ve taken this new talent of yours to help out around the house, too. Sometimes, when Daddy is in the other room, I’ll hand something to you and tell you to “go take it to Daddy”. You also like to dust the table (at least one small portion of the table get really clean) and sweep the floor with the hand broom. Then, one day, we realized that although you were fantastic at following direction, often times things got lost in translation; certain steps were skipped and new steps were added.

One of our favorite chores for you was giving you a wrapper or something and telling you to put it in the trash. You loved doing this. You’d happily grab the wrapper, walk over to the cabinet and drop it in. The problem was you’d often times grab something from the trash and bring it back to us. No matter how many times we tried to explain that the steps to “put it in the trash” consisted of open the door, put it in the bucket, leave it in the bucket, now close the door, it just wasn’t making sense to you.

The last day we asked you to “put it in the trash” was the day you walked back carrying an empty beer bottle.

A Long List

I have a long list of wonderful little stories to share with you and everyone else who even bothers logging on to the site. I’m sure the number has reduced significantly, since I never update the site!

Ah, child, one day we’ll sit down and talk about the pros and cons of self-employment. Pro: working in your slippers. Con: working all hours of the day and night because someone agreed to pay you.