needs and goals

Malcolm is doing/ saying so much stuff all of the sudden.  His new favorite word is "Uh oh."  He will just say it over and over and over... you know how that goes.  

Let me just break here to say, you never know what will occupy kids.  Ceci has been playing with 3 of her horsies and a really long ribbon for about 30 minutes, totally content, not a peep of, "Mommy, play with me," which I generally hear every hour on the hour.  And I play horsies, color, paint, build stables...I'm no slouch.  I try not to put her off unless I am taking care of my or Malcolm's basic needs.  

These days, Malcolm's most basic need seems to be for me to prevent him from seriously injuring himself or destroying the printer/scanner.  He is at that printer cabinet 75 times a day.  And it is closed with an ottoman in front of it.  All that does is buy me time.  He pushes that ottoman away, pulls open those doors, and is throwing paper around the living room in a matter of seconds.  I rush over, he sees me coming, and frantically starts pushing all the buttons.  I get over there, move him out of the way and start to close up shop.  He crawls away crying until he reaches the beautiful teak secretary I bought recently.  There he opens the bottom drawer and starts pulling out all the crayons, coloring books, and more paper.  "Malcolm, no!"  He shakes his head and says, "Nanananana."  Then he moves over to the tv and turns it on, manages to find the volume button and holds his little finger there until Regis Philbin is booming through my living room, "Tell me about your weekend, Pipa!"  I scurry over to turn off the tv, but Malcolm is off again.  

While I try to reassemble the living room (why I bother, I don't know), I hear a splash.  I run down the hallway to find Malcolm's hands in the toilet.  "Uh oh."  So I wash him off, set him down, close up the bathroom, and by the time I am done, I find him in the kitchen eating bits of last nights dinner out of the dustpan that I inevitably forgot to dump.   

All that happened in about 5 minutes.

This is nothing new to any of us who have children.  No matter how old our children may be.  I'm just trying to appreciate the humor in it, because before I know it, he'll be teaching me how to use the printer/ scanner.

Moving on...

I caught a few parts of the Emmy's last night, particularly Tina Fey's acceptance speech for something, not sure which award she won, but I know she deserved it.  Anyway, I really liked this part:

"I thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities.  Well done.  That's what all parents should do." 

If they can write a book on how they did this, I would be all over it.  This is definitely one of my parenting goals.