Clean is relative, and other truths about toddlerhood

There are, in fact, a few things I've learned in this 15-month-lifetime that I've been a parent. Many of them have occured just in the last few months. Perhaps they will be helpful to me in the future. Or perhaps they'll be helpful to someone else.

1. Being smug about the pacifier might come back to bite you. AJ wasn't exactly hooked on it in his infanthood, and DH and I.... we let it go to our heads a little. "Aren't we good parents? OUR baby doesn't need his passie." (Yes, that's what we call it. I just can't do "binkie" for some reason. Could be that our friends call their SON "Binkie." His name is perfectly good -- Brennan -- why they choose to give him such a sissie nickname is beyond me. But, back to the smugness:) "We must have a super-well-adjusted child, because he is Very Independent. He sleeps with no sleep aid. He is talking a lot, and early, according to the daycare teachers, and it's probably because we're such good parents that he Doesn't Need His Passie and therefore, his mouth is available for all the talking. [pat ourselves on our collective back]"
   
   WELL.... at 13 months, I'm being called out. I’m that explorer -- who was it? Oh yes, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, thank you Google -- looking at the Paci-rific Ocean for the first time and calling it "Peace." He began wanting it again, And How. We discovered it after the fact -- one day at daycare I showed up and he was Using! Shock-n-awe! So now at home, when nothing else will soothe him, we give in to his addiction, we feed him the baby-crack. We're okay with it -- he's supervised. Sometimes he asks for it in his pitiful crying, hiccuping voice: "Paaad-deeeee??" It's adorable. Although the first time he walked around, passie casually hanging from his mouth, I laughed out loud. I'd not seen him use one in so long, he kinda looked like someone else's kid for a second.
   
   
2. Unpredictability is a way of life. This I intend for the Feeding category, although I could type for days and days about my uncertainty as far as feeding is concerned. Table food feeding, that is. But by unpredictable, I mean AJ will eat like a horse one day, and the next day refuse to put anything near his mouth except the Dog's bone, which he's been repeatedly instructed NOT TO EAT. On those days he will pooh-pooh the foods he once lovingly inhaled, preferring instead to writhe about in his high chair and ask to get "Owww?" exactly 2 minutes after he's gotten in. Sigh. I worry, every single stinking time, that I need to get him something that he WANTS to eat, or else he'll starve. Even though I know from The Books that my responsibility is only to provide the healthy balanced meal. His is to eat it (or not, if his little body says no, thanks). Usually on these delightful occassions, at around 8:00 pm he will ask for 2 full sippy-cups of milk and drink each one in a single swallow, and I'll be reassured that he won't, in fact, starve. But it gets me every time.
   
   
3. The next size up, in diapers, is often your best friend. Don't resist growing with Baby. Or else you might be sorry.
   
   
4. This is a gimme, but: Babies need to be loved as much as possible in the first year (and a half). And comforted when they cry. But at about 8 months it's okay to leave them in the crib for a while, after dutifully doing your bedtime routine. They will learn to love the crib! This is a message for the Future Me: Just stick with it! Remember how AJ, at first, cried and cried when you left? But then around 14 months, he started reeeeeaching for his mattress, knowing how cool and clean and comforting the sheet and the blankie can feel after a long day! The same way you, yourself, feel about the sheets and the blankie! So stick with the routine.
   
   
5. Letting Little Ones HELP you works. We have both found that if we act like AJ is essential to the Very Important Thing we want to do instead of obediently sitting on the floor playing with His Highness him -- Dishes, Reading the Mail, Putting on Socks, Feeding the Dog, etc. -- he will very gladly touch whatever object it is we're trying to use, in the name of HELPING. :)
   
   And, a fringe benefit -- he's learned to say "Tank Oo" while pulling spoons from the dishwasher, because I say "Thank You" ever-so-politely each time he hands me one. This morning he said it directly to the cook at daycare who brought his breakfast in! Everyone was Impressed! I was Best Mother In The Room for a moment. Cue Whitney Houston -- "Oooonne moment in time, when I'm all that I thought I could be..."
   
   
6. The vacuum-/dust-/insert-housekeeping-chore-ing will keep. Sure, the dog hair is swirling around your feet each time you swish through the kitchen. Who cares. The longer you put it off, the MORE satisfying it will be when you finally have it done.