Wonderful ones

Everyone warns you about the "terrible twos". You even hear people mention the "terrific threes", but no has ever mentioned the "wonderful ones". I'd like to take a crack at that and enlighten you all on a little subject I like to call the wonderful ones. Yes he/she may look cute and their smile may melt your heart, but when no one is looking I assure you that the little angel you see before you has the ability to demolish a whole house in 3 seconds flat. They will find things that you thought they never would, lose things you think you'll never find again and bring about destruction in all forms. Overnight they will become a little person with a mind of their own, do 'naughty' things and (who taught them this?!?) they will intentionally disobey you. I would like to take a second now to remind you that they are in fact only one year old....12 months...365 days. No matter how you say it, it's just not that old. How do they know how to do all the things that really irritate you when they haven't been on this earth for very long at all???

I'm sure some of you still may not believe me so I have come to my keyboard prepared to provide examples. #1 - My gorgeous little son was sitting at the dinner table eating like a starving child when he started asking for more. I acknowledged his perfect sign language by plopping some more lima beans on his high chair tray. I then looked back to David to finish the conversation we were in. When I glanced back at little David I noticed that he only had one or two lima beans left. I was soooo proud of him for eating his veggies so well! I asked him if they were all gone and with perfect sign language he waved his hands in the air letting me know they were all gone and he was done with dinner. I was so impressed with his great dinner that I gave him a cookie for dessert and started cleaning him up to get up from the table. As I walked away to get a rag to clean him with I noticed him take the last little piece of lima bean off his tray and sneak it down into his chair by his side. I stopped dead in my tracks. He was being sneaky. He tricked me. I went to clean him up and removed his tray and found a nice little pile of lima beans stacked up in the corner of the chair. How dare he! He was supposed to be eating those!

#2 - The sippy cup incident. He really doesn't enjoy drinking from sippy cups. They are more of a toy than anything else. With summer heat on it's way I really want him to stay hydrated so I have been trying very hard to teach him how to get water out of it. Lesson number one is don't throw your cup on the floor. You will be much more successful if it's in your hand. He gets reprimanded when it hits the floor. He was being especially difficult one night at dinner and I had just about had it. Everything was hitting the floor - cups, veggies, spaghetti, everything. He took a big boy drink out of his cup and then held it over the edge of his tray getting ready to drop it. I looked at him and in a very stern, no nonsense mom voice told him not to drop his cup. I told him it was naughty to throw is things at dinner and I wanted him to be a big boy and keep his things on his tray. He looked me right in the eye, laughed and dropped his cup. I took a deep breath and said "That was naughty". He again looked me right in the eye and said "Uh oh." I instantly regretted trying to teach him that word. This was not the way I wanted to hear it for the first time.

What in the world happened to my angel? My precious little boy who was so adorable and never did anything wrong?.....oh yeah, he turned one.