Learning the Good Stuff

Yesterday was a particularly entertaining day for Little B, so I thought I'd pass on a few little stories.

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The whole 'no touch' concept is really sinking in with Bella lately. We walk through the store and she points at everything and says "No touch!" and we laugh and confirm. She's gone so far as to play mommy to her toys and has taken to teaching them not to touch things as well.

Yesterday, I was sitting on the couch and I was touching a little berry topiary that we have, and Bella looked at me, looked at me touching the topiary, and said "No touch!" in a very authoritative little two-year-old voice. I laughed to myself, and stopped touching it, wondering what would happen next. She wandered around for a minute saying "Spoon?" until she found a wooden spoon from her little cooking set, at which point she said "Good girl," and walked over to me. She then took my hand (the hand that had touched the topiary) and gave it a few little whacks with the wooden spoon. After I failed miserably at my attempts to stifle laughter, I pulled her up on my lap and explained that she was not to discipline mom or dad, but that we were to discipline her. She then swatted her own hand with the spoon, and I failed miserably again at the straight face. So I explained to her that only mom and dad were to discipline her, and she was only allowed to discipline her dolls if she must.

A few minutes later, she found her little pink dragon ("Esmerelda"), and proceeded to gently smack Ezzy's little paw with the tip of the spoon and say "No touch. Good girl!" and then she gave her a little kiss. I of course thought that this was interrupt-dad-at-work-worthy and proceeded to call Papa and laughed my way all through the story again.

We were very pleased and humbled to note that she understood that the kiss and hug at the end of the discipline is as important as the swatting at the beginning.

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On a slightly lighter note, we were walking through the mall parking lot yesterday, and Bella saw a police car with its lights on. She looked at it, pointed, and said, "Uh-Oh!". If it wasn't obvious before, it is quite apparent now that she is definitely a Becker.