Adventures in Parenting

This past weekend, I exercised my "I'm a strong mom and am going to do a weekend away with the kiddo on my own" muscles and spent the weekend at my mom's in Illinois. Hubby has a ton of projects all hitting at once so I offered to give him some quiet time at home to catch up. On Friday afternoon after work, Anna and I loaded up the car with enough stuff to last us for two weeks at least, and headed south.

I may have mentioned previously that Anna HATES being cooped up in her car seat. Maybe? Small mention? Well she must have heard me tell you that. And she LOVES to make a liar out of me. She was a perfect angel in the car all weekend. I thought maybe I had packed up the wrong child. She spent quite a lot of time "singing" along to her CDs that I brought along for the ride. Then talked on her pretend cell phone and snoozed the rest of the way.

Yes, you did read that right. Anna, 15 months old, talks on her pretend cell phone. She will be walking around, or in this case, sitting in the car, and will suddenly stop, put her hand up to the side of her face (or hold whatever object she's been playing with up as if it's a telephone) and say "ah? Ah-da? Da. Ya. Ah-ya." In her phone voice. I can actually tell when I'm driving when she's "talking on the phone" because her voice changes. It's ADORABLE.

Lately I've really been struck by what a performer Anna is becoming. She loves to get a laugh out of people, especially me. And she has no problem laughing at her own jokes. She waddles and toddles all over the house chuckling to herself about some baby joke that I am not in on, but her chuckling is infectious and she knows it. She knows it so well that she tries to use it now to get out of trouble. She'll look me dead in the eye with a big smile on her face as she stands up on her rocking chair. She'll chuckle at me as she squats down, not sits down like I've asked her to, and continue to look at me with a face that says "Come on, mom, it's funny! You said to sit, but look what I'm doing right here. It's not sitting!!" Obviously I have to enforce the rules, but there are times that it's really hard not to just say "You're right, Anna, that is pretty funny" and just laugh along with her. Like when she dumps her dinner on the floor so she can wear the bowl it was in as a hat. Those are the times I have to leave the room to laugh so that my reaction doesn't reinforce her behavior.

She's keeping me on my toes. Constantly surprising me with some new trick or suddenly being content with something that used to enrage her (like the carseat). It's such a blessing that toddlerhood has so many fun moments because it certainly has a fair number of frustrations too. Thankfully, so far, the fun has outweighed the frustration.