Be specific

If I've not learned anything else during my 5 short years of motherhood, I learned this: be specific with your children.  I say this because I guess in the past I've taken for granted that my children think like me.  I am no longer under that assumption.  For instance, when Gavin was 2, I found teeth marks on my armoire.  I asked him what happened there because it looked as if someone just up and bit my armoire and tried to take a chunk out of it.  Come to find out, that's exactly what happened.  He responded "you never told me not to bite the armoire".  Well, he did have a point.  I couldn't argue (I have a feeling he's going to be a lawyer when he grows up).  So, I clarified that under no circumstances do we ever bite furniture - even armoires.
 
Well, obviously I still haven't learned my lesson.  This morning I gave each of the boys a small pad of paper and a pen to run a muck with.  I thought I had covered all my bases on this one.  We already know not to write on the walls or the table or our bedspreads, you know, things like that.  However, I failed to mention body parts.  The kids had run back to their room to play with their new prized possession (pen & paper) and were quiet - so I was taking advantage of that and spending time with Chloe. 
 
Then all of the sudden Gavin comes running out to show me what he drew - on his foot.  He said, "Look mom, I drew a dog.  And come look at Bennett, I drew a dog on his face too".  Ahhh, great!  I should have known something was up when they were perfectly quiet for 10 minutes.  Gavin's artwork looked great right in the middle of Bennett's cheek.  Bennett tried to duplicate the same thing on his other cheek, but it just looks like alot of circles.  Nice.  Now I have to go straight to swim lessons and do not have time to scrub them down so they look normal.   We were only 5 minutes away from leaving the house when this happened.
 
Now, of course, I have a loud two year old with me in the middle of alot of other kids and moms at a public place with ink scribbles all over his face (no one else could discern it was a dog).  I knew the comments would come and they soon did.  All I could do was smile in response.  After all, it's only ink and you're only little once.  I'd rather them experiment with ink dogs on their cheeks and feet now than have to deal with permanent ink on them (in the form of a tattoo) when they are older.  It's all relative.

"Me too"

Poor Bennett...he wants to be big so bad.  He thinks he's 5 just like brother, only with the vocabulary of a two year old.  His best phrases are: "me too", "not me", "yeah, me know how" and "me no like dat".  Ever since he started putting syllables together at 12 months old, he has spoken in triplicate.  An example would be "eat, eat, eat" or "me bayme, me bayme, me bayme" (translation 'my baby' - yes, my two year old son has a baby doll - that's a whole other story).  So, he likes to make sure he is heard.  I guess that comes with being the second child.  But, he has found that that technique, along with a very whiney sounding voice, moves us into action. 

He used this technique on me today when we took Gavin to his first swim lesson.  Brother had his shoes off, so Bennett says in his very loud, whiney voice "me too, me too, me too".  Why not, I figure, it can't hurt anything.  Brother takes his shirt off so he can get into the pool.  Again, Bennett repeats his request.  Again, I concede because I know he likes to be like brother.  But when Gavin gets into the pool and Bennett keeps yelling (yes, he's moved up a notch from whining to yelling to emphasize how desperate he is) "me too, me too, me too", I had to draw the line.  Unfortunately, Bennett could not see the line and continued to press me from all sides and took his triplicate talk to new levels. 

For 30 minutes - non-stop - he repeated his request and for 30 minutes I told him when he was 3 he could take swim lessons.  So, he had a very simple solution for me.  He would tell me "me want be free (3) right now" (x3).  Now I have to explain the concept of time. 

This was a very hard lesson for him and I feel bad for taking him to a pool and not letting him swim.  But he did well considering.  Now I only have 4 more days of this.  I'm sure he'll forget this lesson come Monday when swim lessons resume and we'll start all over again.