Sometimes I wonder what goes on in my children’s minds! They are all fairly intelligent and information sticks in their minds like lint to velcro, but the remixing of the information into knowledge of how the world works can be…shall we say..interesting?
Take rules for example. They all (even Jack) have a good sense that there are things in life that either cannot or shouldn’t be changed. However their interpretation of which things cannot or shouldn’t be changed is idiosyncratic to say the least.
Jack is going through an “I love crackers” phase right now, driven in part by a growth spurt and in part by his ability to say “cracker”. In the afternoon when he wakes up from his nap, I put him in his playpen downstairs with some toys and he has his afternoon snack of crackers. Not a rule (to me) but to him apparently it is.
Last night he woke up hungry in the middle of the night. It took me a bit to figure out what the problem was (“Cracker” sounds an awful lot like “Water” especially when Mama’s not too awake), but I got him a couple of crackers and figured that if I put him back upstairs in the bedroom crib, he would eat his crackers and go back to sleep. Nope! As soon as my foot hit the stairs he started to fuss, getting more and more upset as I went up. On the top landing I got it- crackers are eaten downstairs, even at 2 am! I carried him back down, put him in the playpen and went back to bed. Sure enough, not another sound until he woke up at 7am!