Don't Eat Stuff Off The Sidewalk

Around here, our home houses a daycare, and my family gets to spend our days with adorable toddlers and kids from ages 1 to 13.  It is August now, and we have just seen the bigger kids start school again, leaving me and the really little ones here all day.  Every summer when the "big" kids come back they kind of push the little more vulnerable ones aside so when they go back to school, I feel like I am getting reacquainted with the little ones.  No older child is there to push them aside.  I love, love, love the big kids, and cherish my little bit of time a year I get to spend with them.  But now that they are back in school, I  am having so much fun with these mini people - Sunday's post was about kids who talk and the words that come out of their mouths.  Tonight we are going to focus on the ones who cannot talk yet.  These are their stories.

Here is a countdown to why small toddlers are so cool:

6.  Attempting to throw a ball in any way, shape or form.  The ball often goes behind them, or just straight down.


5.  Their sense of stating the obvious.   Now my husband works from home too, so he is here all day along with the rest of us.  He is our keeper of the thermostat,  which means everyone else in this house is cold.  More than once this summer I walked into the living room to find the little kids have turned our electric fireplace on to get warm.  Seeing this made me remember how awesome these little guys are !!

4.  Having a one year old try to manipulate early motor skills to sit on your lap.  Normally with a child when they want to sit on your lap, they just plop down on you.  With 1 year olds they walk way in front of you, so you think they are leaving, but then they start backing up slowly like those scooters at Wal Mart when they are in reverse.  Beep, beep, beep.  They they go to sit down, and sometimes they make it, and sometimes they plop down in the floor in front of you, but it's all good.

3.  I love musicals, especially ones that were originally filmed in black and white.  Unfortunately I tend to break out in songs from these musicals, sometimes not even realizing I am doing it.  The big kids just cut me off talking about something interesting to them.  Today I was making breakfast for two 1 year olds, and I broke out in a joyous rendition of Singin In The Rain, and there might have been some dance moves thrown in,  when I caught myself and forced myself to stop feeling the funk and settle down.  But guess what?!?!?!  The babies were copying my dance moves.  These are my people!!  We sang the song twice ALL THE WAY THROUGH!

2.  Slow motion chase scenes between 1 and 2 year olds.  Like today, when a 2 year old boy wanted to pretend to check the heartbeat of a 1 year old girl.  Instead of just walking up to her and saying, "Hello, let's play doctor, I will be the doctor and you can be the patient.  Wouldja mind if I check your heartbeat?" the kids cannot talk well enough to communicate verbally, so they have use a lot of body language.  And by body language, I mean that the boy has to follow the girl around until he can get her stop somewhere (probably by cornering her) and then the 20 seconds of working hand eye coordination to get the stethoscope where he wants it.  All the while the girl trying to get away, but he has a year's development on her, so she's not going anywhere.

1.  And the most entertaining things the toddlers love to do no matter where/no matter when.  Drumroll please:  Peek A Boo!!!  Holy smokes, they love peek a boo.  They will waddle behind a chair, or a see through door with a very suspicious look on their face, and just as I go to walk over to make sure they are alright THEN THEY POP OUT AND SAY PEEK A BOO!!  And laugh and laugh and laugh.  So fun.

I am so excited to get to spend the next several months with these little guys.  We have some goals to realize this year.  Don't throw the magnetic puzzle pieces in the floor that are supposed to be hanging on the fridge.  I made a countdown sticker calendar - realizing that the big square is the area to put your sticker - not the page margins.  Potty training (I'm optimistic about this year's group) and making peace with nap time.  Sounds like a full year.  I'm sure I will have many more things to write about on this subject, soon.

Old Things Are Passed Away;

Behold All Things Become New

2 Corinthians 5:17