Pigs & Poultry

Kate's bath times are turning out to be much calmer and more of a learning environment now that we have started bathing her apart from Ashton. In the bathtub there lives a green duck and a pink duck. (Ashton has christened the pink duck "Uncle Scotty" and the green duck "Ashton".) Tonight Kate got great joy out of sending the two ducks down the slope of the back of the bathtub saying "Weady, Set, WHEEEEEEEEE!" before gently pushing them down the slide. I hope this gives her courage to send herself carefully down our own little orange slide on her own, as her cautious side has prevented her from sliding down face first.

She also is learning to role play with the ducks, while I show her the ducks can hug, kiss each other and say "Ello Governor!" back and forth. I wonder if I am confusing her by using an English accent during the role play...oh well! As long as she gets the fact nice and gentle are the way of the world vs. hitting and biting everything.

Kate is also becoming very good at letting me know her preferences, saying "No drink!" and "No bed!" and "No socks!". She is verging on the edge of the Terrible Two's, but I'm beginning to wonder if the only reason it is so terrible is because I am loosing all my parental control over her. While it is easy to have a life free of argument and full of compliance, how boring it would be. So, while in the throws of tantrums and back talk, I must try to remember I am raising a person, not a robot, and will be proud of her opinionated defiance as I am putting her in timeout!

Ashton has been a messy human being since I can remember. He's a messy eater, messy dresser, messy painter, messy drinker, messy messy messy! He has never cared if his hair is out of place or if he has chocolate on his hands, but tonight I think we have had a break through! We have been reading "Pigsty" by Mark Teague and it may have made something click in that little brain of his!

The story is about a little boy that refuses to clean up his room to the point where his mother tells him "Fine, if you wish to live in a pigsty, then fine!" Shortly thereafter a pig moves in, followed by another and another and another. The boy is happy at first to be able to leave his room messy and play with Monopoly late in to the night with his new roommates, never picking up the pieces. But over time, the room begins to smell and the pigs are making the mess worse, so the boy calls a local farm, has the pigs hauled away and proceeds to clean up his room. Ashton seemed very interested in this story, so after walking across books to reach his PJs for the 5th day in a row, I told him "That's it. The pigs will be moving into this pigsty soon since it's so dirty." This really got his attention. He immediately dropped to the floor and started cleaning up his books, instructing me to help him "so the pigs don't come Mommy!".

Now I have begged, pleaded, bribed and threatened him in order to produce a clean room. So, after all that, I must admit I was dumbfounded to see him actually begin to pick up when I hadn't really done that much to start it. His room is now clean as a whistle and he even got mad at me for leaving the story I read him on his chair, getting quickly out of bed with a "Tisk tisk" and putting the book on the shelf. My love of books has grown 3 times as much today and I hope that Paul reads this and sees why reading is so important!

{Ok, I would like to add 2 days after writing this, as I wrote this previously then saved it in draft, Ashton wakes up each night 2-3 times crying. We've regrettably come to find out it is because he fears the "pigs" are coming in his room to get him. GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT. Now what? :p}