An oldie, but goodie

For three straight days Erik was fighting me for his naps and it had gone to a dark place. So yesterday I told him quiet time for an hour and then he can get out of bed so that is what we did. This left me two hours of time to spend with Erik himself and that is not something I'm use to at the moment. On most days I wake up the boys around 3:15 for swim lessons, we get dressed, head out the door and go. They have each other and I am just a facilitator.

I told Erik yesterday since he was up early that I still needed to do my mommy things and he needed to play by himself. It worked for maybe 30-40 minutes but eventually he was begging for his brother. Then he asked to make a camp and tent site and I finally figured out an awesome way to create it where it stays so that entertained him for a bit.

Eventually I was done with my chores and it was time to entertain Erik. He has been getting in the craft drawer for a while so I decided a craft and pictures were a good way to kill the hour until his brother was due up. It's like the old shaving cream project, but the soap from the shaving cream was staining our cement so I decided to use whip cream instead. So I got some food colored water, some utensils and some whipped cream and set to work.

I thought it was brilliant, if my orally fixated boy ate some I wouldn't care, its whipped cream! What I didn't expect is that Erik would want to eat more than he wanted to play. I should have known because he loves sweets that he would be more interested in tasting than playing.

 

At some point I did threaten him and try to get him to play. My threat was "if you keep eating it, I will wash the whip cream off the table, so play." My advice is to just give up and not go there, its not worth it since it is about the kids.

Eventually as I expected would happen he knocked over one of the water glasses and it washed off the whipped cream. Then as all things happen in our house, it morphed into him playing with one of his "Cars." So in Erik's own way he was discovering and mission accomplished. I guess this is why it is good to just let it go sometimes.