Andrew likes time outs???

By Tiffany George

Andrew is so freakin' adorable. We have a canvas beach chair in his playroom that we have deemed his "time out chair". He honestly rarely misbehaves (thank God) but when he does we have tried to teach him to sit in his chair to calm down for a few minutes. I want him to see the time out chair as a strategy to calm down, not a punishment, and it appears to be working.

He has done the sort of thing that I am about to describe before, but today it just melted my heart so I wanted to share. We finished lunch and I was trying to put the dishes in the dishwasher, but my little "helper" would not stop removing dirty dishes from the lower rack. I was getting a little frustrated, saying "Andrew, please stop touching those dirty dishes, they could make you sick...Do you want to get in trouble?"

At this prompt, he suddenly took off into his playroom, in search of something that clearly started with the letter T. I can't quite figure out all of his one-syllable words yet. Anyway, I finished up with the dishes and went to the backroom to find my little precious sitting in his time out chair, reading a book, with the biggest aren't-you-proud-of-me-Momma smile on his face. He sat there for a good five minutes, happy as a clam, and basking in his glory as I called Pete and Mom to relay his cuteness.

Mom is continually reminding me that many things that Andrew does are not typical kid behaviors, with no exception here. The other major thing that Andrew does that is apparently atypical is his desire to play in his crib when he awakens. Pete and Gail got us a video monitor for Christmas, and our new favorite channel is ATV (Andrew TV). We just plug the monitor into the TV and watch him on our TV during his nap. It is awesome.

This kid loves to be in his crib. We'll put him down at night and he'll play for a good 20 minutes, happy as can be, before he finally settles into dreamland with his head properly positioned atop the John Deere pillow that I made him for Valentine's Day. When he awakens in the morning, he will play for at least an hour, often an hour and a half or more, before we go to get him. Keeping him in his crib for so long makes me feel guilty sometimes, but anyone who has seen his joy while playing up there reminds me that I should feel guilty for taking him out before he is ready.

What does he do for an hour being confined to a tiny crib, you ask? Well, first of all, it is clearly great fun to put his legs in and out of the crib rails. And rolling around in the crib, what a treat! He loves to hold his teddy by both arms and kiss him, hug him, pat his back, read him books, you name it. He also has a wonderful audience (approximately 12 stuffed animals that he sleeps with) to test out his budding voice. He talks and babbles and laughs and screams, just to see how loud he can be. He recently has begun playing with his blankets too. He'll unfold and "fold" them back up, or put them over his head. He cracks himself up when he covers his head with his Wiggles blankie and walks around his crib like he's a ghost. He cracks us up too!

We hope that some day when you are in Rochester you get the chance to witness this kid sleeping...it is priceless!