He's Got it Under Control

Today, Squishy procured for himself a screwdriver (plastic) and a wrench (real, but tiny). He then crawled about the house banging purposefully on all of the cupboards. After he had beaten them into submission, he gave a satisfied "Oh-HO" noise and placed them down. Apparently his work was finished. I'm calling Guiness-they must have a category for "World's Tiniest Repairman".

Good Parenting

One of the most amusing (and occasionally sobering) things about having a toddler is constantly having your own actions reflected back at you. Canaan models his words, actions and tone of voice on the things that I do. It's most noticeable when he repeats me verbatim, or when he says something cringe-worthy that he learned from me. It is nice to see that he is learning from me how to be empathetic though, and he also watches out for baby Ezra very nicely. Yesterday:

Setting: Canaan's room.

Ezra is crawling into the corner.

Canaan: "No, no buddy! Get out of there, buddy! You don't want to play in there! (exasperatedly) "Come OUT OF THERE, baby Ezra! OUT OF THERE!" 

He sounded just like me.

He was trying to help...

So yesterday, Big and I were playing a game that involved balancing a small truck on my head. Since it had wheels, it kept rolling off. After about ten minutes, he placed it back on my head and said "I go get the glue!!"

I had to spend the next fifteen minutes explaining why I did NOT want a truck glued to my head, even though it was a "so boo-ful (beautiful) truck".

He is teaching me manners!

So apparently I'm rude, at least according to Big. We often play a game where I call him a "terrible, terrible boy" or a "stinky, stinky boy". Today I asked him "are you sooooo stinky??" and he goes "Mommy, NOT NICE!" He was so serious!

Why I am the worst mommy EVER

Today, I refused to let my son bring snow into the house so he could take a nap with it. I am clearly the cruelest person ever to walk the planet.

Canaan's cow story: "Cows say moo. Cows live on the farm. Cows like milk. Cows like Kix (cereal) too. They drink milk from the milkin' 'sheen (milking machine). Cows on the farm like Daddy!!"

No two children are alike. If you have just given birth to your second child, if you are pregnant with your second child, or if you are just vaguely contemplating having another child in the distant future, people will start telling you this. Everyone will start telling you this; mothers, fathers, grandparents, teachers, daycare workers, and even people whose nearest experience with a child was the time that they substituted for the school crossing guard. They will repeat it so often that you may find yourself muttering it like a sort of mantra.
Now, to most people (parents or not) this seems an obvious truth. However, until you are confronted with the day-to-day reality of juggling the wants and needs of more than one child, you will only know it intellectually.
My two children are so different I’m pretty sure that it’s cosmic comeuppance for the relative ease with which my first child passed through babyhood. No, my second son is not a difficult baby. However, aside from the fact that my children are both male, they have nothing else in common except DNA. They don’t even look alike.
Canaan, my older child (known around here as “His Highness”) breastfed voraciously from the moment he was born. He turned up his nose at every type of bottle with expressed milk in it-consequently he went everywhere with me until he ate enough solid food for me to be gone for more than fifteen minutes.
His brother is a bottle baby and drinks everything from formula to apple juice with equal enjoyment-he is also a devotee of the pacifier.
Until he was over a year old, Canaan would not go to sleep without a ritualistic combination of patting, rocking, singing and not one but TWO fans providing a wall of white noise. If a person happened to sneeze in the same room, he would bounce awake.
Ezra is placed in a crib with a pacifier and drifts off without so much as a peep.
Ezra has even managed to defeat my “no disposable diapers EVER” gospel by peeing so copiously that no cloth diaper can possibly be used for more than 45 minutes.
So, there you have it-no two children are alike. That’s probably why childcare books continue to be published and will on into infinity. However, as challenging as two can be, the constant chaos is a thoroughly enjoyable experience.