Merrick's New Crib Friends

So many kids develop an early attachment to a favorite stuffed animal, blanket, etc. Up until this point Merrick has never really done this. Part of this could be that we are the kind of parents that allow him to have a pacifier when he sleeps (the horror!!!), so maybe that is some type of an attachment of its own.


However, recently he's had a bit of favoritism toward 3 certain stuffed animals of his. He's named all 3 of them - I'll have you know he chose the names himself - and all 3 must now sleep in his crib with him. In fact, a couple of them have already accompanied him on shopping trips and a birthday party.


Here they are below - 'Nana' the elephant, 'Bear Bear' the bear, and 'Sheep the Turtle' the turtle. And I know Merrick would want me to be very clear that you can't call the turtle 'Sheep' for short. Just as you may not call some Jennifers 'Jen', or Davids 'Dave', sheep's name is 'Sheep the Turtle'. I'll leave it to you to figure out who's who.

Goals for our Troublemaker

With a sweet face like this:


Do you really, really think we'd need to put together something like this?

There's been a little trouble lately at Seaside School, caused by one Merrick D. Radley. I had my first 'parent/teacher' conference the other day at his school. Who knew they started this at age 2?? Apparently Merrick has been causing just a bit of mischief, such as straight-up telling his teacher "No!" simply because she asks him not to, making sure the teacher is looking before he specifically does things he's been asked not to do, making sure the teacher is looking before he proceeds to dump an entire yogurt down his shirt, not sitting at the table during mealtime, maybe a toy or 2 thrown, and oh does the list go on.

So, I ask, what do you think my first response was? Perhaps, 'Oh no, not my angelic child!', or even 'Wow, I'm so sorry, I feel like such a horrible parent.'. Nope, none of these. It was 'Phew! I am SO glad it's not just me he's testing like this!'

Apparently what we determined from this meeting is that he is a normal 2-year old boy (DUH!) who is making it his sole responsibility to test boundaries. And he has thoroughly tested the boundaries of his wonderful teachers. Ya, um, welcome to my world.

In all seriousness, we've been very happy with the school and really like their philosophies and teaching methods. He wants (and we would like for him) to move up to the next class (older 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds), as the things his current class is learning are colors, shapes, and identifying letters. He's known this stuff for quite a while now. But behaviorally he needs to work on some things, because he's not quite where these older kids are. At the end of the day, he's just 2 and it's not as though staying in the younger class (older 1-year-olds and younger 2-year-olds) is going to scar him. We want him primarily to have fun, but also to be challenged as much as he'd like to be, and we know that he is quite inquisitive and likes to learn new things. Plus, he tends to act out when he's bored, whereas if he's being challenged he can be as good as gold.

So, Craig came up with the brilliant idea of putting together a list of goals for him...sort of a combination of what he needs to do at school and a couple things he's got to master at home. We probably could have used several sheets of paper and covered our refrigerator with his goals...but we figured at his age 3 would be enough to master at a time. He's already on his way to being potty trained, but he very much makes it only on his terms and so we don't want to push that. Crossing our fingers, so far it's been getting through to him...he gets a little treat each time he meets his goals.