Reduced to tears by a toddler

I’ve just spent 40 minutes trying to persuade Small that he’s tired and he’d like to go to sleep. Well, I know he’s tired. He knows he’s tired. But he’d rather be horrid – biting, scratching, headbutting, pulling my hair. I’ve walked out of the room three times, and he follows me crying (there are drawbacks to this co-sleeping lark) and I’ve ended up caving and bringing him downstairs because I’m afraid of losing my temper with him. I’m very tired, and having him keel over so that his head drops on my head was just too much I’m afraid.

Other than that, it’s been pretty much a good day. Big started out pushing it as far as she could this morning – wrapped a string around Small’s neck, trapped his fingers in a drawer and then fastened her bicycle helmet onto him so that he couldn’t see and fell over. All in the space of 30 minutes, and all with me in the vicinity (first two with me in ensuite and them in the bedroom, last with them in the garden and me in the dining room). So then I sat her down and spoke very firmly to her about all of this, and she agreed that she did want to go out for the day and would stop being horrid to Small and was extremely helpful while we got sorted.

Once we were out at Chatsworth, she legged it with Barbara‘s E, and I barely saw them all afternoon. Useful that she likes bright coloured clothes, was easy to wander along, check where she was and leave them to it! Small spent the afternoon exploring. He is going to be hard work – he has no fear at all as far as I can tell. He really desperately wanted to get onto the big climbing frame, and tried ever so hard – nearly managed to get up the scramble net, but not quite. Give him a couple of months, and I’m gonna need a rope!

His achievement of the day is quite huge, in the area of communication. He’s learnt to nod, to say yes! Blew me away first time he did it, and I suddenly realised how drastically it changes things. I mean, I talk to him, I never stop talking to him, and he communicates with gestures, but this is a common gesture, it’s one anyone can understand, and suddenly, he isn’t just talking to me, he’s talking to the world. Wow.

Big had a fairly huge moment as well once we got home. I was having a quick browse round the blogring, and I showed her the word tree on Jules blog. I asked her if she would like to try something similar, and she said yes, so we grabbed one of the library books we read yesterday, and she started picking words out. True, she’s looking at the pictures rather than the letters, but it’s a definite start. I think that she is definitely a child who is motivated by externals – stickers, charts, word tree, it’s going to be that kind of thing all the way. Can’t help wondering if that has been set up by nursery, but whatever, it’s with us now.

Tomorrow we are going to have a quiet day – turns out that swimming doesn’t start just yet, so it’s the only day this week we don’t have to be somewhere. I’ve got post to do, and looks like we’re going to be making a word tree. I also got a copy of Mona Brookes, Drawing with Children so we might get started on that too.

I have to confess that reading on other ppl’s blogs that they are getting started with curricula is having a bad effect on me – I want to tell Big to watch the tv, and not even consider learning anything 😉 I’ll try to rein it in though. Guess that’s the non-conformist in me coming through!