Caught!

We’ve entered a new phase of parenting: The phase of having to out-think a sneaky kid. But I’m sure this phase only lasts for 18 years or so, right?

Last Saturday, Andrew and I were having breakfast in the kitchen when I noticed a loud silence coming from the living room. Jack was in the living room, and, as all parents of toddlers will tell you, Silence = Bad.

So I went to see what Jack was doing and found him elbows deep in the lower cabinet of the entertainment center, a cabinet we usually keep locked but sometimes forget. There’s nothing terribly dangerous in there from Jack’s point of view, but there is PLENTY of stuff in there for which Jack is a destructive, tornado-like force. Plenty of expensive, fragile stuff. When I appeared at Jack’s side, he gave a guilty, startled jolt and dropped the DVD he was fingering. “Doh dah! Doooooh dah! (Don’t touch! Don’t touch!)” he said, shaking his finger at the tempting cabinet.

If you read between the lines, this translates to, “Ah, I’m so glad you came in here, Mama. This cabinet was open! I have no idea how it got open! But I am NOT supposed to touch the things inside here. In fact, I only came over to the cabinet so that I could explain that rule. Now that you are here, you can close the doors and secure it as usual. Don’t touch!”

Now I realize that, at this point, out-thinking my sneaky kid is not all that tricky. I’m just saying that he’s already in the stages of thinking, “The cabinet is open! Go go go go go! But quietly, lest the overlords hear!” and then feigning innocence when caught in the act, so what is the situation going to be in a few years?

In other news, we are in the process of The Great Pacifier Weaning of 2008. Up until his last doctor’s appointment, the Bink Rules were as follows: Jack can have the bink only when he is in bed or in the car. He cannot have a bink at any other time, except for, you know, the times we let him have one.

Sure, we knew that those exception times were because of extreme tiredness, comfort after a split lip (this happens more often than you might think, the child has a talent for breaking falls with his mouth), or – let’s face it – our desire to just stop the whining already, but he didn’t. So we weren’t exactly being consistent. Thus, our plan for the weaning is to actually restrict the bink to bed and the car, then remove the car, then remove the part of “bed” where we are reading in the chair before bed, and then remove bed. So far, we are up to the car and we only give it to him in the chair before bed if he asks and we can’t dissuade him, and so far, it’s going pretty smoothly.

Today in the car he asked for one, “Bih?” but I hadn’t even brought one with me so that I wouldn’t be tempted, and nobody died. In the morning after he’s changed, I tell him it’s time to put it down, and he does. And he hardly uses it in the chair before bed at all. But I am dreading, DREADING, the part where we take it away from him in bed. I don’t know how we’ll do it, and I’m not really thinking about it because I’m trying to pretend we’ll never have to. I imagine we’ll be a tired household when we finally bite the bullet.

Speaking of whining, I recently asked Jack if he wanted some cheese with that whine, and he stopped whining to shout, “Zsheeeeeeeeszh!” I sort of forgot who I was talking to.