Character study from The Little Mermaid

"Why Ariel's daddy is not nice?"

"He's nice, Aidan. Ariel doesn't follow his rules, and he wants to keep her safe."
"Why he thinks she isn't safe?"
"He thinks it's dangerous out of the water."
"Ariel doesn't think so. He should listen to her words."

"Mommy, why Ursula is not nice?"
"Why do you think, Aidan?"
"Maybe somebody pushed her and she didn't like that."

"Ursula is not nice.  She should say sorry and listen to her mommy.  Maybe she needs to sit on the stairs."

"Why King Triton breaks Ariel's office?
She didn't listen to his rules.  She needs to follow her daddy's rules.
He shouldn't break her things, though, Mommy - that's not nice."

The amount of pondering on The Little Mermaid is pretty impressive.

I don't want to get big

"I don't want to get big.  When I get big, I can't be little anymore."  This was a topic on my boy's mind a lot today; we had to talk about it several times.  I'm not sure what's behind it; all I could think was to reassure him that he'd always be my boy and that Daddy and I would love him whether he was big or little or medium.  He would always be our boy, and he'll be able to do fun things when he gets bigger.  No reassurance.  We finally agreed that he'd stay little, just to keep him from being upset.  Would I love it if he stayed little maybe twice as long as usual.  Sure!  But I won't feed him coffee or anything.  Probably.

So close, and yet so far

The potty:  our friend and foe.

Two days ago a certain little man went potty five times.  Five times in one day.  Five Spidey stickers, five candies, five times.  Five!  Yesterday we went out and got some big-boy underwear that he picked out and is super excited about.  Awesome.  Progress!  He even wore them for awhile with no dipe or pull-up, knowing that meant he couldn't go unless he went in the potty.  He did it.  Dry overnight, again.

Today, not once.  Not one time.  Nada. 

Really?

Swim lessons

We're making headway; he's doing great in swim lessons, and has made lots of progress.  He finished his first set of Red Cross lessons doing most things, but not putting his head in the water yet.  We started his second set of lessons last week (second one was today), and today he put his face in the water repeatedly blowing bubbles. 

His only problem is that he marches so much to the beat of his own drummer that he has trouble listening at times.  If he doesn't want to try something, "I'm not ready."  If he's having fun, no amount of reminds from an instructor (or me) will get him to stop taking off with his noodle across the pool.

However, the reason that I'm going to have to embarrass him as a teenager happened after class:  We were going to visit a friend and her new baby after class, so to hasten our changing after class, instead of taking him to the lockerroom, I had him hold his towel around him while I changed him.  Don't be worried - there were maybe two people in the whole facility, and neither of them was paying a lick of attention to us.  Good thing.  Just as I was about to replace his diaper, he very theatrically (don't know where he gets that) threw his arms (and towel) open, yelling, "Surprise!......Happy Birthday!" at the top of his lungs.  In all his glory.

A poem of yesterday

I like boys.  I like girls.
I like mermaids.  I like vikings.
I kind of like dragons.