Baby Spice

"Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of.”

That’s part of the classic poem. There’s more about “sunshine and rainbows and ribbons for hair bows,” but it seems lately we’ve been getting a little more spice than is called for in the recipe. It seems like we’re having a bit of a sugar ration at the old household.

Now I know two-year olds have their “terrible” stages and it’s just a part of what kids do, but I’m really beginning to wonder if there is some sort of curse your parents cast on you as you get older that manifests itself into your own kids. Some sort of payback. And when do I get to cast it on MY kid?

To be fair, Finley really is a good kid and she certainly doesn’t have the typical toddler temper tantrums. It’s just that she goes through modes and moods where she likes to test us… all the time. Sometimes she’ll climb up on the coffee table and wait for us to tell her to get down… and not get down. Or she’ll run into the living room, knock over a chair and wait for us to tell her not to do that and then run back in the living room and knock the chair over again.

And it doesn’t matter how many time outs we give her or how many times we try to explain to her how important it is to listen to Mommy and Daddy, she just likes to push our buttons.

Maybe that’s her job at this point. And maybe it’s not really about how she learns to listen and obey. Maybe right now, it’s all about how WE deal with it. Nah, she’s just being a brat.

But for all the table standing and chair tipping and all the other million things she does to drive us crazy, every once in a while she brings us a little taste of sugar that makes everything all better. Now and again she’ll randomly come up and want to hug me or even crawl up on the couch and lay her head on my shoulder for no reason except to be next to her Poppa. Sometimes she’ll lean over and kiss me on the cheek and even say “I love you, Daddy.” It doesn’t happen all the time, but it doesn’t need to, really.

It’s just nice to know that as I’m carrying a kicking and screaming table-stander to her room for a time out, all I have to do is wait a little while and I’ll have my cheek smoocher nearby.

And over time, hopefully the level of spice and sugar will begin to level out. That is, until the teenage years. But for now, I’ll take what I can get and start practicing the incantation that will put the curse on her kids.

Fall Pictures

Time to clean out the camera!

Helping Hand

There’s no doubt that the average toddler is curious.

Heck, Finley has been curious from the beginning. But, recently I’ve noticed that she’s not satisfied in just wondering how things work or what things do. She wants to make it all happen.She doesn’t want to just push the buttons on the remote just to push the button on the remote. Now she knows that if she hits enough buttons, Barney will show up. And it’s not just the remote. It’s anything that makes her think she’s grown up.

When the vacuum comes out, she wants to make it go. She knows where the broom is and wants to sweep the deck. This weekend, she was all about mopping the floor. And she loves to wipe the coffee table. Of course, her expertise at these cleaning skills has room for improvement.

And there are other things she’s learning to do or wants to do by herself… with absolutely NO HELP from us. She can slide on shoes and socks (somewhat) and get a coat on, but if she gets stuck, she gets frustrated fairly quickly. It takes a little convincing from us, but after a while she gives in and lets us help with the Velcro or zipper.

Then there are the other ways she wants to help out. There’s “helping” momma bake and decorate cupcakes. That’s when she hasn’t eaten most of the frosting.

But I guess it’s all about the effort. I like the fact that even though it’s really curiosity and play that are motivating her, she thinks she’s helping.

The bottom line is that she is not afraid to figure out how things work. She wants to learn and get her hands on whatever it is that has sparked her curiosity. It’s a first step to even more learning. Now, the trick will be to get her to sweep, mop, and clean ten years from now.

Building Blocks

It seems like just about every day Finley amazes us.

It’s probably because a toddler’s brain is a great big sponge. And everything they learn is repeated right back at us, so we think they are the smartest kids in the world. Even when it’s stuff we take for granted as grown ups.

And there are certain achievements and milestones we seem to measure as more important than other things. I’m talking about the first smile, the first word, and the first step. But along the way, there are a bunch of smaller steps that we help her take and every one of them seem pretty big to us.

Case in point: We bought Finley some little wooden alphabet blocks. They’re the standard brightly colored ones, with every letter and number on them. Over the past few weeks, we’ve played with them, stacked them and learned about each of the letters. She’s been able to associate words and names to each letter – “A” is for apple, “D” is for daddy, “F” is for Finley, “M” is for momma. So, we get to play and learn at the same time.

Now she’s learning that the letters can be combined to make words – the first steps to reading. I actually wasn’t planning on working on words for a little bit, but she’s always asking how to spell names or animals. Somewhere in that mix, she got stuck on the fact that her name ends in “l-e-y.” I started working on the “F-i-n” part. She was having a little trouble connecting them, so we took a break for a bit.

I don’t know if they’d been working on names at school, but suddenly Friday night, while playing with her blocks, Finley started calling out “F-i-n-l-e-y!” Of course, to be sure, we had to ask her what she was spelling, and she said, “That’s my name.”

Maybe I’m a little biased, but I’m thinking that’s pretty cool for a two year old. She’s taken a very big step toward a giant world of reading and writing. Again, as adults, it’s something we take for granted, but it really is amazing how big of a deal making that first connection is.

As I mentioned before, it’s just the beginning steps of reading, but it’s much more than that. It’s realizing she is building a foundation of learning. She’s making connections and setting off the little light bulb of discovery in her head. It’s not so much that she can spell her name; it’s that she realizes she can spell her name. That she understands how she got there and what it means.

Hopefully, this will lead to a need to learn more. For me, I’m hoping that she’ll learn how wonderful words are and all the things that can be done with them. I’m also hoping she can learn and understand math better than I ever could.

Ideally, she’ll be well-rounded and enjoy learning about everything. And I can’t wait to help her along the way. There are plenty of books I can show her and music to play for her. I’ve got stories of history and maps for her to explore. But, I’ll have to wait just a bit longer.

There will surely be moments of frustration and anxiety, which will lead to the most important things I can teach her… patience and trust. For now, we’ll stick to the blocks. Maybe “daddy” will be the next word we spell.