Shave And A Haircut, 2 Bits

I'm so proud of The Wife. She gave The Boy a haircut this weekend and it looks great. Until now, we had just trimmed above his ears and his duck tail once. But he got a full-on, real-life, haircut. She did a great job. Now he looks like such a little boy instead of a baby. Heck, once she cuts his hair a couple more times, she'll be ready to start cutting my hair too! :-D

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Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda

Here I sit. Waiting for the tow truck. 3 years, 39,000 miles. Just outside of warranty. The clutch just drops out from under my foot. So the hydrolics get their fluid from the brake master cylinder. But there's also a reservoir for transmission fluid. It's empty. I tried adding fluid, but to no avail. There's no forcing it into gear - which is probably a bad idea anyway. So I'm looking at a $112 tow bill because my insurance agent sucks (it's actually probably my fault, but I'll blame her) and only has me covered for 3 miles.

So ugh.

I shoulda gotten the extended warranty. And I shoulda had better insurance.

Putting It To The Test

We watched our friend's 15-month old for a few hours this weekend. It really put our Conscious Discipline principles to the test. As I may have said earlier, most of it sounds like common sense when you read it, but it's not the first thing that pops into your mind when a situation arises. I feel like we did pretty well, and it was good practice.

We put them both in the rickshaw (bike trailer) and went pedalling around for a while. That was quite a bit of fun. We also went swimming, which was a blast.

Poop

For as long as I can remember, when The Boy looks like he's pooping, I either ask him if he's going, or tell him he's going - and I use the word poop or pooping.

Tonight we were in the bathroom and he was brushing his teeth. He stopped, leaned over and squatted a bit, gave a good grunt, and then stood back up straight, grabbed his diaper, and said "poop". Then he proceeded to finish pooping. I was floored and amused.

Hi Da-Da

I was talking with The Wife on the phone the other day. I didn't think much of it when she started asking The Boy if he wanted to talk to me, that's pretty standard and always fun to hear him babble.

The Wife: "Say hi to daddy"
The Boy: "Hi Da-da"
Me: "WAS THAT HIM?"

It was so cool. He strung some words together and actually said something in his little boy voice. That's a sound I'll never forget.

Conscious Discipline

We're in a workshop on Conscious Discipline. I've found it quite interesting. What I've gotten out of it so far is focusing on the difference between commands and requests, and when to use each. Also the subtle difference between thanking the child for doing something and giving them specific praise for the action they performed. In this realm it gets into the difference between raising a "people pleaser" versus raising someone with good self esteem. Other things include focusing on being assertive instead of passive or aggressive.

I don't do a very good job of explaining it. But it's good stuff and I would definitely recommend taking the workshop.