Role Playing

Landon loves playing pretend. Every day he is a different animal. Most days he is a cat. He becomes upset if I refer to him as Landon while he is in cat mode. He will only respond to me if I call him cat and his response will often be in a series of meows! He gives me a good laugh every single day. He can go from this...

...to this in a matter of seconds.

 His personality is constantly changing. The one constant is the amount of fun that Landon can have with the simplest things. His Cookie Monster Play-doh set is one of his favorite activities. We play with it almost daily. He makes different fruits, veggies, and letters and feeds them to Cookie Monster. Today Landon even insisted on brushing Cookie Monster's teeth once he was done eating.

He then wanted to give him a bath, but I assured him that Cookie Monster doesn't need a bath. Landon settled on just putting a t-shirt on Cookie Monster and then went on to do his next silly thing.  The other day while I was cleaning up after our lunch dishes Landon came into the kitchen. He yelled,"Surprise! I Mommy!" I turned around and sure enough he looked just like me, kind of! He put on the t-shirt that I had worn to bed the night before and pretended to be like Mommy for the rest of the afternoon. I even had to refer to him as Mommy for most of the afternoon. He sure does keep me on my toes and laughing. Landon is the perfect pick-me-up each morning and evening.  

Mommy Confessions

There are so many mommy moments that we are all afraid to admit. Why? Because we are afraid of being judged. I'm putting it all out there so that I can let go of some of my mommy guilt.

I feed Landon cake for breakfast, kind of! Landon calls his favorite muffins "peanut butter cake". I bake a batch of peanut butter muffins every three days or so. Landon loves them and I can't bake them quickly enough. They are made with whole wheat flour and are loaded with bananas and carrots. Landon eats several a day and always asks for his peanut butter cake every morning upon waking. Other mornings I feed him apple flavored fig newtons (after all, they have apples in them!). He doesn't get these things every morning for breakfast. Some mornings it's pancakes, some mornings sausage, some mornings just a glass of soy milk. It's all up to Landon what he eats for breakfast. He's not a morning person, nor am I. Neither one of us have much fight in us in the morning so breakfast is pretty low key.

When I'm at my wits end and the weather is yucky outside I fill up the bathtub. I no longer care about water conservation at that point. Landon loves to play in the tub and it is my tried and true method for calming us both. Even the hard core environmental conservationist would be filling up the tub five times a day if they were in charge of Landon on one of those days.

I often forget about Landon's nightly sippy cup until the following night. They almost always roll under the bed out of sight. I always regret this the next day when I realize how bad sour milk smells. Even soy milk has a terrible smell when it sours. There are times when I just throw the sippy cup out instead of dealing with the smell and cleaning it. Thank goodness for those cheap disposable ones that Landon can now use.

I refuse to turn meal time into a battle. It's just one fight that I choose not to have with Landon. Instead I sneak pureed fruits and vegetables into Landon's food. Call it lazy parenting if you want like some have, but at least I know that Landon is getting his vitamins and daily needs met when most toddlers are not. I am also a firm believer that meal time should be an enjoyable time.

I have on occasion gone to bed with dinner dishes still in the sink. On these days, I will wash them the next day with the breakfast dishes. There are some evenings when I am just too tired to be bothered with them.

At times, I run the clothes in the dryer twice to try to get the wrinkles out. I hate ironing and always try the dryer method first. I then curse the dryer when wrinkles are still in the clothing and I have to pull out the ironing board.

I prefer Landon to eat healthy snacks. Yet, I have a secret stash of sugar filled snacks for when Landon goes to bed. It's my treat after a long day. I'm a hypocrite.

I allow Landon to take his portable DVD player with us while we're at the store. He will watch a movie while in the shopping cart at the grocery store or in his stroller while browsing through department stores. It keeps him entertained while I shop in peace. Fellow shoppers thank me as well since he's not screaming throughout the store like other children!

I often allow Landon to play outside after the rain has ended to jump in the puddles. It always crosses my mind that I should just throw soap into the puddle so that I can skip bath time!

Sometimes we even play outside when there is a light drizzle. It's so hard to stay in all day on rainy days so I try to make the best of it and if there is a real light rain, then I allow Landon to play on the covered back porch.