Nathaniel is at his essence a very sweet, loving and happy child, but he is not without some typical frustrating toddler moments as well. Several months ago my brother-in-law inadvertently gave me the key to keeping my patience during these trying times. While my nephew was exhibiting some toddler behavior of his own, Brian turned to those of us observing the situation and smiled and then half jokingly said to him, "Why are you acting like such a 2 year old?" Brian's wisdom and this scenario has stuck with me and helped me keep the perspective that Nathaniel has only been on the earth for 2 years, so it's normal he may have some "kinks" he needs to work out in terms of reasonable human behavior. It's also helped me hold onto my sense of humor, which in my opinion is a necessary parental survival tactic!
Last night as we were putting Nathaniel to bed he began to have a small meltdown over the fact that he didn't want to take off his beloved "Kachow" shirt, a birthday present from Great Grandma Joann that features a super cool flashing red light and images from Disney's Cars movie. However, he also wanted to wear the Dino shirt that matched his new jammies. When we tried reasoning with him that he couldn't wear two shirts at the same time, he got upset. It was late and past Nathaniel's bedtime, Jeff and I were both tired, and it was tempting to just force him into his jammies and be done with it. Suddenly we saw the humor in the situation and, hiding our smiles at poor Nathaniel's helplessness, we came up with a solution - Lambie would wear the flashing shirt, and Nathaniel the Dino one. He was intrigued by this solution and very proud to dress his stuffed animal friend in Cars gear and settle into bed for the night. Thus a major catastrophe right before bedtime was avoided!
And of course I got a picture for you all! Here are the two of them, happily awaiting a bedtime story from Daddy:
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