The Small Family   

Sept 27, 2009: Theo Stacks Up

Well, here we are at the end of September, already officially into fall, and it’s bloody hot! Triple digits this weekend—ugh!! Since our little Theo is a big fan of any outdoor activity, we can’t wait for the cooler weather to get here. It’s a little tough to get him outside much when it’s blistering hot anytime after about 10:00 a.m.

Which leads me to the title of this week’s post: “Theo Stacks Up.” Because it has been so hot, we’ve had to play inside a lot, and Theo’s latest favorite activity is to stack things. His most ambitious project to date is stacking cans in the pantry, and you’ll see in this week’s pictures that he succeeded admirably on one occasion, stacking a lovely FOUR cans in a beautiful tower on top of the dog food bin. We’re not quite sure how he did that, since the tower is almost taller than he is, but we were impressed nonetheless. I was upstairs working and Chris was pureeing some food for Theo in the kitchen, and we both kept hearing Theo squawking angrily amidst crashes of things. We figured if he got into too much trouble, he’d let us know, so we let him do his thing...and eventually, he created that lovely tower. He seems to be starting to figure out how to balance things on top of one another, and he gets quite aggravated when they come crashing down.

I also used “Theo Stacks Up” as our blog title this week because it’s been one of those weeks where we especially realize just what a fun little guy our kid is stacking up to be. He’s just in a learning explosion lately, and it’s so much fun to see. For instance, everything this week is a telephone, which he wedges between his shoulder and ear as he wanders around to “talk.” Our favorite telephone item of the week was Chris’s hair gel tube, which Chris dubbed “the gelophone.” Several pix are featured in this week’s album.

Theo came upon the gelophone while I was cleaning the master bathroom, when he did another fun trick. I had taken everything off the countertop to clean it, and I placed all the bottles of soap and lotion and such on a separate shelf in the bathroom. I heard Theo clattering around in the bathroom behind me as I cleaned, but I assumed he was just playing with the few toys I had brought in there for him. Not so! I turned around to find him very methodically taking all the bottles off the shelf and placing them ever so carefully in his potty. And when he’d get so many in there that no more would fit, he’d take our larger ones and rearrange the remaining ones to make space for more. I was quite impressed by his dedication to the task at hand...and rather amused at his creative use for the potty! (He has, by the way, sat on the potty a few more times, but hasn’t done anything. At this point, I’m just happy he’ll even sit on it for a few minutes, so he gets much praise and kudos for doing that. We’ll work on putting things other than bottles in the potty when the time comes!)

Theo continues to be obsessed with books, which is wonderful...and even more wonderful is that Auntie Lynnie gave us a bunch more to add to our collection! So, we now have some new-to-us ones to add to the repertoire, which is nice because Chris and I can only read Wheels on the Bus so many times before we want to throw ourselves in front of the wheels of the titular bus!

As mentioned, we saw Auntie Lynnie this week—went down to Elk Grove to have lunch with her and Grandma Diane for Grandma’s birthday (a couple days after the fact). We didn’t get to see any of Theo’s cousins, as they were all in school, but at least we got to have a nice visit with Auntie Lynnie and Grandma and got to see Uncle Charles for a bit.

We also had a visit from Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Tom on Saturday, which was very enjoyable! Theo kept them busy with books and “phone calls” on his various phones, and we all ventured to the mall so Theo could burn off some energy in the play area. Our original thought had been to go to the zoo, but since it was 100 degrees, we quickly nixed that idea. We also managed to go out to dinner at a REAL restaurant, which is always a wildcard with Theo. He does fantastic in restaurants at lunchtime, probably 90% of the time. But by dinnertime, he’s often tired and cranky, so we rarely even try to go out then, unless it’s just McDonald’s or something quick like that. But, we chanced it, and he did super! We all walked over to the excellent Turkish restaurant near our house, where we got to see a belly dancer and have some delicious food. (Chris was coveting mine—I know what he’s going to order next time!) We love that restaurant because even though it’s very good and a definite step above most “kid-friendly” establishments, they’re always super nice in there, and they never act like they’d rather not have a baby present. (This may have something to do with the fact that the owner has small children who are often in a playroom at the back of the restaurant!) As usual, they seemed happy to see Theo, and he even got complimented by the waitress for his very good behavior throughout the meal. He spent most of his time nagging Grandpa Tom for bites of his dinner, which Grandpa readily shared! We’re teaching Theo to say “please” in sign language when he asks for something, and by the end of the meal, he sort of had a “Mom! Do I HAVE to?” expression on his face every time we’d say, “Can you say please?” Nonetheless, he obliged us, and thus he was rewarded by getting to share our yummy Turkish food.

In other behavioral news, our experiment with time-outs is working fairly well. Only thing is, Theo seems to enjoy the time-outs! The only place we have for the Pack-n-Play is right at our bedroom windows, so he actually likes being in there and looking out the window. But, it DOES stop the bad behavior (hitting), and when we let him out a minute or two later, the tantrum has passed and he’s a happy guy again. So, although I’m not sure enjoying a time-out is supposed to be part of the process, it is actually working in that it puts a quick stop to the negative behavior and kind of “resets” him to good behavior. And that can’t be all bad! He’s only earned maybe four time-outs in the past week, but so far, so good.

We’re actually having a lot of luck with the behavior strategies from the Happiest Toddler on the Block book, too. As I mentioned last week, I underestimated Theo’s ability to actually understand some things. I’ve been practicing more and more the strategy of letting him know that I know why he’s upset when he starts to throw a tantrum, and nine times out of ten, it stops the tantrum immediately. And I’m getting more successful about being able to then redirect his attention to something else, using the strategies in the book. So, I give a big hats-off to Dr. Karp for actually coming up with a strategy that works! Happy toddler means happy mom and dad, and that adds up to far fewer frustrations on both ends. Every kid is different, and I don’t think any strategy works for every kid by any means, but these strategies seem to work very well with Theo, which is wonderful for all three of us.

Speaking of happy mom and dad, we snuck out to a movie on Sunday while Grandma Diane came over and played with Theo. We went to see Julie and Julia, which was very cute and funny, and then Grandma Diane stayed for a very gourmet meal of hot dogs and Brussels sprouts. (It’s better than it sounds—Chris makes wicked-good hot dogs and roasted Brussels sprouts!)

So that’s it for our week. Hope you all had a good one, too!