Tales of Toddler Disobedience, and other tidbits from our week

It has been quite an interesting couple of weeks in toddler-ville (the place in which all parents of a special type of toddler reside). Eli has discovered that he is in fact a true-toddler and that means that we (smug parents that we are) are not going to avoid pushing/smacking from Eli like we thought we were. As a result, Eli has been spending some time in timeout at home and at school. At home, he has a naughty step and when he feels like Nate is infringing on his space (usually when I try to read to both of them at the same time) and he pushes/or tries to push him he stays on the naughty step for 1 minute. Now, when Eli is feeling especially "naughty" when his time is up he will actually choose to stay on the naughty step instead of reading with Nate and I. HE actually says "No Read, naughty step"... Seriously, he is so my child.

At school when he gets in an altercation he has to pick out a book and go sit alone. On Thursday after pushed a little girl (who started the fight by shoving him off the slide...nice), he went and picked out his own book and sat down before his teacher even had a chance to tell him to do so. Perfect! He clearly knows the rules and consequences and chooses to break the rules anyways. We fear for our sanity with this one.

Along the same lines, Eli has a new catch phrase (not to replace "uh no, what happened", but just to enhance the wonder of it all). He says " I no like it". Now this could actually mean that he doesnt like something or it could mean (and it mostly does) that he is feeling a tad bit toddleresque and wants to exert some independance. For Eli a simple "no" is to mudane a word to possibly explain what he really means.

Now on to some word play. When Eli first started saying the word "truck" it sounded like "F**K". It was terrible to see that sweet cherub face bust out with such a raunchy word...though a bit funny if we are going to be honest about it. For the past 2 months he has said truck correctly, until yesterday when he tried to say "dump truck" for the first time and forgot about pronunciatingt the "TR" part of truck. Thats right it came out "dumb F**K". The family was on a drive-through starbucks run (seriously we have two children under 22 months, we live on caffeine) and Eli pointed out the window and shouted "dumb f**K). I think we need to start recording every moment of every day so we dont miss these gems.

P.S. The two pictures show our most recent attempt at finger painting at home. I decided to spice things up by giving Eli some small sponges to paint with. Note to parents out there: 1) too much paint=sponges=watery paint bubbles, 2) watery paint bubbles can travel 8-10 feet when slapped by little toddler hands at a high speed, 3) finally, washable paint, like washable markers does not in fact mean that it comes totally out of fabric, furniture, walls, windows, blinds, dogs, moms hair, ceiling fans, doors, baby brothers or your own mouth.