"No!" she says. "Not dat way. Toon awound!"Protestations and explanations notwithstanding, there's not much to do beyond modeling the behavior I want to see, or risk lots of problems for the future.
On the bright side, Addison recently told me that she "yuvs" my beard, specifically the little area under my lip that I sometimes grow to creep out my mother-in-law. Addison loves my soul patch, and whenever I shave it, she gets sad, leading to a conversation something like this:
"What's wrong, Addison?"If you really hope and pray and dream, honey, maybe you will. Maybe you will.
"Sad. Addison sad."
"Why?"
"Daddy beard. Go away. Addison sad. Tears."
"Don't worry, it'll grow back. It'll come back, I promise."
"Addison yike it." She points to the little spot under her lip. "Addison have beard, too."
I love how confident toddlers are about their sense of rightness
ReplyDeleteIt's true...there's probably some sort of life lesson in the fact that children demonstrate complete assurance of their actions for a long time before uncertainty ever really creeps in. I wonder when she'll first respond "I don't know," the way Bill Cosby describes "brain damaged" children:
Deletehttp://www.amazon.com/Bill-Cosby-Himself/dp/B0002B15I8