Teaching a Horse to Count

So lately we have seen BB begin to express a lot more anger and frustration - if we take something away, he looks at us with his lips pursed and claps his hands once or twice, and more recently stomps or kicks his feet and we've even had a couple of hitting episodes. It's clear to both J and I that BB is in full out fit-throwing mode with this behavior, and we say "We don't throw fits" many times throughout the week (and/or day). The first time J saw BB stomp his feet he warned, "Boy! You'd better be teaching a horse to count!" J and I are debating whether our 3 warnings and then a time-out discipline system is still effective, or if it should be more of a one warning or an immediate time out system, as there are things BB knows are no-nos, and I stopped wondering how much he can remember when J told me that one day BB left his soccer ball under the couch and the next morning he walked right over and crouched down on the ground and peered under the couch, clearly looking for his ball. He remembered he had left it there. So there have been a lot of firm voices and no-nos and mama-trying-not-to-laugh-while-daddy's-disciplining-the-baby-moments (it's just so hard when BB throws his food off his high chair with an expression like "What are you going to do about it?" as J is telling him not to).

Discipline is quite mysterious to us.

In non-discipline news, BB loves to climb into things and stand inside them or on them, like the box his toy wooden food is in or his block dump truck. And he loves loves to climb up the back of his high chair or up the stairs, and anytime he spies that one of his negligent parents didn't put the gate up, he races over and starts clomping up the stairs (towards the guitar, which we moved to the stair landing) - luckily his stair-crawling is pretty noisy so we are quickly alerted that we have an escapee. He loves brushing his teeth - oh man, just try to take that toothbrush away, and you will face the wrath. Sometimes I find the toothbrush in weird places and J tells me it's because he had to hide it from BB. And lately BB will bring over a book and climb in our laps to page through it - such a sweet time. He loves to climb atop one of us and wiggle-bounce until we bounce him - it's so fun to see him communicating, even though it's without words. But then he does have some words - dada, mama, all done, and uhoh pretty much comprise his vocabulary. His favorite toys are his drum set and his wooden food and his Leapfrog Fridge Farm toy which he dances to in the kitchen. And speaking of the kitchen, his favorite foods right now are scrambled eggs and blueberries. And he actually has a new kitchen trick, but I will save that for my next post.....

Hope you enjoyed a little update!