Tough Love

Dad has had some really good quality time with Miss Charlotte lately. Sunday afternoon was just a lazy day. Mom and dad were up late Saturday night and of course were up early on Sunday. So by 2pm they were exhausted. B.C. (before Children, or Before Charlotte) they would have sprawled out together on the couch with the two dogs, turned on some movie from the '80s they they are always playing on TBS and dozed off into nappy nap land. Since the invention of Charlotte that does not happen much any more. Dad being the father that wants as much time with his daughter as possible, sent mom upstairs to nap. Dad got down on the bean bag chair and played with Charlotte.

He remembers reading her lots of books and trying to teach her colors. He doesn't remember falling asleep, sitting up in a bean bag chair, during the middle of the day. Luckily he wasn't asleep for long. He awoke to his daughter poking his closed eyelids saying, "EYE, EYE, EYE, EYE" as she spilled Cheerios all over him. He might have been asleep for all of 10 minutes. Children have an auto-awake annoying mechanism to ensure you don't really fall asleep for long. Still it was a little scary to think about falling asleep and leaving her alone in the house. Charlotte one day you will read this and your Da-Da is sorry. I didn't mean to fall asleep on you. The good news is that I'm sure at this point no mother will ever hire me to babysit their children.

Despite spending lots of quality time with Charlotte, tonight dad had to discipline his daughter. Yes the dreaded Time Out. Ok, before I go any further, those mothers who feel she is too young to be disciplined, please keep your comments to yourselves (yes mother I am also including you in this). A little time out never hurt anyone, especially a child that is trying to push her limits and is learning there is a difference between Mamma and Dada's threshold of tolerance. Tonight she learned that playing with the blinds was a quick way to get put in the corner. A) Blinds and their cords are dangerous for children to be playing with B) the sound of wooden blinds banging on 100 year old glass windows to the point of almost breaking is just unbearable C) Dad counted to 3 and told her she was going to time out if she kept it up. She kept going. Poor kid. I cant blame her, I would have tested my parents too.


She cried and screamed in time out. But dad watches enough Super Nanny to know when its time to get out of the corner (35 minutes right??) just kidding. He told her what she did wrong, hugged her, kissed her, and then went back to playing. Only this time when she returned to the playroom, she picked up a wooden hammer and started banging it on anything and everything of value and electronic in the room. Needless to say, time out number two went just like the first one, only after she didn't touch anything that she shouldn't have. This discipline thing is a lot of work.