Mr. Independent

   If you know Rory, you know he's always been very independent.  At 4 months he wanted to use the spoon to feed himself even though he didn't have the motor skills to do that yet.  At 9 months he started walking all around the house.  At 10 months he always needed to hold the toothbrush.  Heaven forbid mommy or daddy doing it.  He would just scream and or bite to get that thing out of his mouth.  But you give him the brush and he will happily tap it inside his mouth and do a little jig at the same time.  Now though that he's a todd-ager, his independence has grown to a whole new level.  You can't change a diaper anymore without him getting mad.  He wants to do it himself and if he could I'd gladly let him.  Cut his food up for him?  Heck no!  He doesn't want that.  Give me the whole banana, he says in a simple and demanding "mmmp." vocalization.  A cute curly headed nod always accompanies that noise.  It's too cute not to smile, but don't smile too long because its not cute when he bursts out in a tantrum because he doesn't get to milk the cow, pour his own milk himself and then screw the lid on himself.  This toddler business is insanity.  Oh no.  I'm not saying its aggravating or obnoxious at all.  You must be misreading the tone.  I'm just saying it's really really insane.

   Today is a prime example of such.  We spent the afternoon shopping to get Christmas things half off.  (and I got a ton of really cool things for next year for my classroom.)  Rory who as I've said is a little impatient couldn't wait until we were done shopping to eat so he got his little cup of cheerios out and proceeded to grab handfuls at a time and shoved them in his mouth.  Of course as you know, half of them either fell out of his hands or stuck to his face.  I swear we are lucky we aren't in the witness protection program because anyone looking for us could have followed the trail of cheerios around Target.

 We were excited to get to Olive Garden because I was starving.  So apparently was a woman who walked out of her way, almost got hit by a car driving by and then tripped up the curb just to cross our path.  "Oh he's darling!" she says, "But I can't look at him!  He's so cute, I might just KIDNAP him!"  It was really hard to smile and nod, but then again it's not the first time someone has said something like that before. To quote my favorite Scarecrow, "Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking."

When we got seated Rory had nothing to munch on since he left all his cheerios at Target.  So of course he screamed a little bit, waved at the baby next to us, screamed a little bit more.  When the bread sticks came it was as if heaven opened up and was giving him glorious Italian seasoned manna!  That is until I started tearing the pieces apart so you know, he doesn't choke on them.

    "Mmmp," Rory complains.  Oh silly daddy.  Why would you try to break the pieces up?  I forgot he would rather just eat the whole bread stick.  And eat his salad and noodles on a plate?  No way!  Let me lick the goodness off of it instead.  It must be tastier that way.

Moral of the Story: Toddlers = Exhausting!
Needless to say, I ordered a Sangria.  #rewardyourself