Little Sponge

You know how some people say that little kids are like sponges and that they will remember and copy everything you do? Well, that couldn't be more true. William is ALWAYS trying to copy us--and it only takes us doing something one time for it to stick with him (and for him to think that is the "right" and only way to do something). Most of the time this isn't an issue--I like to think Darrell and I tend to carry ourselves in ways that are okay to mimic--but it hasn't been without its problems. Like the time William watched me eat soup with a cracker like I was eating chips and dip and tried to do the same (which, for him, proved to be a very ineffective way to eat soup and a very effective way to eat a lot of crackers. Probably a win-win for him). Or the time Darrell was trying to get him to eat some baked beans and they ended up playing a game of peak-a-boo with the beans before he would put them in his mouth. Next time we had beans--guess who wanted to play peak-a-boo at the dinner table?

The other night, though, we realized that one of our unintentional lessons about cleaning up was sticking--and we realized it in the cutest way possible. As I've mentioned, we've had some bedtime issues after taking away William's pacifier. The biggest one is that he basically doesn't go to sleep right after we put him to bed. Some nights he will just lie in bed and talk and kick the wall and move around until we either go back in there or he settles himself down; some nights he gets out of bed and sits on the floor by his nightlight and reads himself stories, usually until we go in there and put him back in bed. We've started giving him up to an hour of unwind time before we go in there because we've decided he isn't really doing any harm, and for whatever reason he always stays in his room (unless he poops, although even then he never actually leaves the room, he just opens the door and slams it shut until we go get him).

Well, one night during his unwind time we heard him scream, so Darrell went back to look in on him. Turns out he was just reading "Goodnight Gorilla", and he was screaming in surprise with the zookeeper's wife when she woke up to find all the animals in her house (the cuteness with which he "reads" books is fodder for a whole different post). Since everything was fine and it was still within his window of unwind time, Darrell left him lying on the floor with three or four books spread out around him. Thirty or so minutes later when I went in to check on him he was asleep in bed (which is standard--since we gave him a little stool he no longer falls asleep on the floor), with all his books stacked up nicely against the wall. You see, after bedtime stories every night, Darrell and I return the books to the stack of books in his room (maybe someday we'll get an actual bookcase for the room, but for now they just live in a stack on the floor), and without our even realizing it, William was watching this and started copying it at night when he would read books to himself after we left the room. Most precious thing ever.

Of course, he (and life) isn't perfect, and sometimes he falls asleep in bed before the books make it back to their pile... But that's still just as cute.