I have been feeling a little behind in everything lately. Even though the check marks on my list are multiplying, even though things are slowly coming together… ugh, this time of year. It comes too quickly and goes away too soon.
Chance has just figured out how to clap his hands. He’s not great at it yet, but he can definitely make a “clapping” sound. He also looks so PLEASED and DELIGHTED when he does it… ah, it just gets me, big ole sappy mom, me. You can’t help but celebrate too when a kid has yet again, mastered the universe! Or at least a small portion of it. Yay, clapping hands!
He also seems to be understanding “no”, or starting to. And he doesn’t particularly like it. I swear he’s testing me. Sometimes he goes right for the electrical cord of the ground heater (that has been moving from room to room), looks me right in the eye, grabs it and then smiles. THEN when I say, “No Chance, that’s not to play with,” he gets a scary, determined look in his eyes, hollers his defiance at me, and shakes the cord some more. “See this, mom? See me shaking the cord? What are you gonna do about it?” (I kinda hope this part is only my imagination running wild due to lack of sleep.)
So, with those updates, I’ve gotta tell you… I am SO LOOKING FORWARD to seeing Chance clap on Christmas morning! I remember my (much younger) kid brother clapping from excitement at Christmas and it’s just so damn endearing. (He’d probably be mortified.) I think Chance will be a little too young to clap from holiday excitement, but I’m going to try to get him to clap every chance I can. (ooh, that sentence came out a little circular, didn’t it?)
And on the flip side, I’m SO DREADING the tree going up! Even WITH the soft, plush ornaments my mom gave me for the lower branches, I know the scenario. Me saying “no” at every turn, the bellows of defiance… it’s a whole new Christmas carol.
Would it be tacky to cordon the tree off with baby gates? – the weirdgirl
That’s a kid’s job – to test you and find out where those boundaries are. He’s also going to see what happens when he crosses the line.
One thing that works is distraction. When he goes for the electric cord, and you give him a stern look and tone, give him something else to do, like a toy that he can play with instead.
Distraction – it works wonders. And it’ll prevent from you thinking at the end of the day that all you’ve said to Chance is “no.”
Yeah, that’s what I usually do, give him the stern no and then take him over to another area/set of toys. It used to be that he would start to go for the cord, I would say no and he would stop. But this week he’s started the testing thing. It’s just been a long week.
We are not putting up a tree for that reason. Too much temptation for busy little hands. My dad did buy us an inflatable yard thing that looks like a snow globe with Snoopy and Woodstock inside. I can’t believe he spent money on that thing. But when the place needs a little christmasing up, just plug it in a boom! Christmas is the ruburbs.
I hear you about the mobile space heater. why are SF apartments so damn cold all of a sudden.
congrats on the clapping.
What my parents did, oh 29 years ago or so, was for the time the tree is up, flip things around and put the tree in the playpen (since such a word was still in use at the time). According to my parents, this worked great, though it probably looked crazy …
Since we’ve had the same potted and growing Norfolk pine for a few years that started as just a 3′ tree, we’ve always had it on a pedestal. The earlier years were easier since that could be something as tall as 3 feet high that my cat couldn’t knock off the lower plastic ornaments.
Now that the tree is 6′ and might break my back to hoist inside again this year, I’ve been eyeing a 4′ potted coastal redwood at OSH that the cat will not reach again from the pedestal.
Over the years, we’ve had trees set up on tables, trees wired to the ceiling, trees actually set INSIDE a playpen. A baby gate isn’t tacky, it’s simply practical!
Now the tree just sits on the floor, like a normal tree, with all the breakable ornaments up high, and all babies are told to leave the damn thing alone. After a tussle of wills or two, they do!