Smartypants

“Daddy ride the bike”

“Where Mommy go?”

“Music on. Daddy fixed!” (Turn on the music box that Daddy just put new batteries in)

“Baby change diaper” (regarding her baby doll)

—

She’s putting sentences together! It amazes me. And every day it’s a new sentence or word combination. And she repeats everything we say. EVVV-ERY-THING. It’s really time to start watching our mouths and be careful that only child-appropriate things are being said in front of her. Even if she doesn’t always know what it means, she will say it! And that could be so embarrassing at the wrong time!

What’s weird and eye-opening to me is the stuff that she hasn’t learned from us but has learned elsewhere, like from her grandmas and from daycare. For instance today, she was exceptionally whiney and tantrumous (new word?), so I threatened her with “timeout.” Now to clarify, I have only done timeout with her twice, and it has been months. Like I’m talkin’ six months ago. I put her in her crib and went and got her once she calmed down. So I didn’t really think that today, six months later, she would be phased by a timeout threat. But how did she react? She shrugged up her shoulders, turned around, and continued the tantrum while stomping her way to her room, where she went to the corner and sat down cross-legged in the corner. So I played right along and told her to sit there until she could calm down. Five minutes of her screaming and whining (it went up and down in pitch and frequency SEVERAL times), she reduced herself to sniffles, and I went to talk to her. And she was still sitting in that corner. We “talked,” hugged, and all was well for the rest of the evening.

That whole timeout/go-sit-in-the-corner thing is something she definitely did not learn here. Which also makes me realize that my supposed little sweet well-behaved angel has maybe not been so well-behaved at daycare, if she knows so well exactly how timeout seems to work!

Sometimes I feel like I just can’t keep up with her mentally. I really don’t give her enough credit for what she knows and how fast she’s learning. No wonder she gets bored and frustrated with me so often; I think I’m still treating her like she’s an infant and not a little girl! Agghhh, she’s growing up so fast!