... try, try again, right?
I hear a chorus of children saying that in my head as I write this, yet as a parent it can be hard to remember to try things that are hard again with your child.
Today I had some errands to do in Milaca, so we met up with Joe for breakfast and then he watched Truman while I went to the post office.
Taking a two-year-old out to eat is not easy, but today instead of focusing on that in my mind, I focused on ways to make it easier for him.
He was excited for a placemat and crayons, but after we sat and ordered he grew restless and started climbing on the table to reach a line of Valentine's Day decorations.
I told him not to touch the decorations because they might fall, but instead of stopping or just continuing he explained what he was doing.
He was building a hill.
So, I suggested we build a hill with his placemat, which turned into a house. A few YMCA cards, crayon "food" and napkin wrapper car later and we had a whole pretend land in which to play until the food came.
There you have it: he's growing up. It used to be so hard to keep him entertained in restaurants, but we tried again and it was different.
After I went to the post office I had a crazy idea to take him to Milaca Unclaimed Freight to get supplies to make valentines.
That doesn't sound like the worst idea until you consider that the store is a warehouse full of stuff purchased from abandon freight and being resold at discount. It's a toddler's dream. It's big and interesting and overwhelming.
It's kind of like parent-of-toddler purgatory.
Or, it was.
Today he was too big to sit in the cart, but rode on the front and walked. I had no idea how well this would go. My son has been one of those kids that embraces the world, bolting away from me since he was quite small. So I have grown to fear shopping with him, especially in big places full of interesting unknown things.
But today he stayed near me. He looked at things but put them back and even wanted to fix things that were out of place. He didn't protest when I told him he couldn't have a remote controlled car, but offered him something he could have instead.
Eventually he did get overstimulated and wanted to grab things I asked him not to, but the entire trip was so dramatically different than it had ever been all because he is older and capable of controlling his desire to touch things.
All because of the work all of us have been putting into help him gain control over his own actions and decisions.
I also tried something different before we went in, inspired, again, by Meredith's blog, I talked to him about what we were going to do in positive terms. I usually talk to him about something before we do it, but realize I may use more negative statements than positive.
I might say: "I need you to be careful not to touch things," whereas I could be saying, "I know you are capable of not touching things."
Just semantics to adults, but it can carry so much more weight for toddlers and I wanted to try it out.
Today I said we were going into the store and we would go potty because I knew he could and it would be best to do it before we shopped. And he agreed.
And what do you know? He did. I don't know if it was the talk before hand or the consequence from the day before sinking in, but I am happy that he is thinking about the choice to pee more now.
Then I reminded him why we were there, to get Valentine's Day supplies, so that we wouldn't get too distracted by the big warehouse of whozits and whatzits (which, frankly, is an internal monologue I run for myself in these situations).
And while we did browse many other things and I did let him touch and explore, while explaining, it worked.
When we came home, we even started some of the valentines.
It was a big day, but it was a good day. So many other days like it have not gone as well in the past. But today, like all others, was a new day — a new chance to learn, a new chance to grow, a new chance to try something we've done before again.
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