we were all out walking of an evening. Mabel was in the stroller with her hands full of treasures…flowers and rocks and a stick. then she spied a motorcycle! she showed it to us. Andy said, “it’s like she has a list or something. she always sees the things she’s interested in.” and that made me laugh because i like lists and i like the image of my 19 month old already keeping a list. if she did have a list i bet it would look like this:
- bikes
- rocks
- birds
- helpers (emergency vehicles)
- fish
- dogs
- trucks
- balloons
- babies
- squirrels
- people wearing hats
and one more unrelated Mabel story…she always has a hard time having her fingernails cut. so we started using the LLL trick to set a time limit–we’ll only cut your nails while we’re singing the ABC’s. when we’re done singing, we’re done cutting. that way there’s an end in sight and something fun to occupy us during the hard part.
it works brilliantly.
recently, she’s started to prefer AP’s cutting to mine. which is great because it offers her one more way to control the situation. if i say we need to cut her nails, she’ll counter with “PAPA!” then we can happily wait till AP gets home. well, it was finally time to start cutting. AP turned on the bright light, i got the clippers, and Mabel got her baby. she took the clippers and carefully pretended to cut her baby’s nails. all the while singing the ABC’s! can you imagine?
Hi I just discovered your blog from your comment on Golightly.
The singing while clipping nails strategy is exactly what worked for my son! Only I would sing, “Where is Thumbkin” for each finger (e.g., Where is pointer? Where is middle?, etc.).
Jennifer
Well written article.