Attempted Independence

I guess it's kind of a big day around here. Lunchtime caught me by surprise (seriously? both kids are hungry right at 12:00? is that, like, a "thing"?), so Isaac went into the highchair with a handful of cheerios in front of him. Mainly because Mikayla is louder than him, and you know what they say about the squeaky wheel. Anything to achieve the sanity more quickly, I always say. Mind you, Isaac has never actually eaten cheerios before. We've gotten him onto those little dissolving Puffs things in the past week or so, but otherwise he is all, "Put it on a spoon, peasant." So the cheerios today was purely a move of "hey, he can at least throw them around and amuse himself."

Much to my delight, he seized upon the opportunity to refine his pincer grasp and CHOWED those things. Fast. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't searched his bib pocket and the secret hiding place in the corners of the high chair. So cool! My sweet Isaac is a little self-feeder now!

The backfire: He proceeded to reject all of his normal lunch foods, eating only when another handful of cheerios was dumped onto his tray. Even the sippy cup was immediately launched. I did briefly interest him in a graham cracker, but I soon realized that forcing variety for its own sake only resulted in a lot more crumbs to sweep up. Cheerios really are the perfect, bite-size baby/toddler snack, aren't they?

So Isaac had like three cups of cheerios for lunch. Can't wait for the old digestive process to grind to a slow, grainy halt over that one.

And then? Mikayla announced she was done eating and ready for a nap. Cue her insistance that she is capable of putting herself down for a nap all by herself. I'm all about less work (see above), so I told her to just come back down when she wakes up. She went upstairs, I heard her door close, reasonable quiet ensued. Then I remembered the whole potty/no diaper thing. Shoot. Mental calculations suggested inevitable naptime "incident" based on most recent tinkle. Also, I began to hear strange thumping.

My freshly reheated pizza snickered at me as I jogged up the stairs to intervene. Turns out, Mikayla had the same thought, and was in the process of leaving her room to go potty. I'm sure that would have gone well, but I was obviously happy to help. Various potty time shenanigans followed, but we eventually got her back into her room (Isaac was, naturally, wailing for more cheerios by now).

I only had to threaten spanking twice before she stayed in her bed for good. That girl knows the cards to play, too. Will her good Christian momma refuse to read her the Bible before naptime? Yes, yes she will. Don't judge.

It got easier from there, though. Isaac let me know he was finished with a hearty, "All done, momma!" (Waving his arms wildly and making Donald Duck-like sounds. The fine art of interpretation.) And he has spent the last 15 minutes while I've been writing this post, doing this:

That boy loves him some outside! He could stand at a window for...well, at least 15 minutes, until his momma interrupts his workflow to snap a poor-quality backlit phone picture.

He currently has located another window and is working on raising the blinds. It was going so well until he noticed the leftover cheerios on his highchair footrest:

I wish that had better lighting, because the sight of him next to the cock-eyed blinds, munching on old cheerios is really one of the cutest things ever.

So, self-feeding and self-napping. I might just go book myself a vacation because obviously my kids barely need me anymore!