Favourite Things Friday

I slept in this morning....it was practically morning tea time by the time I got up. Which is kind of cool since it is my day off but is kind of sucky because now my whole day is out of whack. I'm theoretically running about 3 hours behind with everything. Including this post. 

Originally when I drafted this post this morning there was a short  paragraph right here that was full of grizzling about my week. When I read it back I realised that this post is all about happy things , so I took it out. It would have been ironic to leave it in don't you think? Would that have made this post a technical oxymoron?

My favourite thing this week is a conversation I had with Miss P last weekend and the outcome of that chat mid week. 

Miss P was talking to me last Saturday about some of Little P's recent behaviours. What he'll eat today he won't eat tomorrow. He may just tip his plate on the floor  for kicks(usually when it's something hard to clean up , like spaghetti) He won't sit for longer than 12 seconds anywhere. He goes into melt down at the drop of a hat when he doesn't get something immediately. He'll become hysterical when Grandpa drives Bella's car.  He'll make a big deal out of having two specks of dirt on his hands but is happy to walk around with three foot booger strings hanging out of his nose and refuse to let you wipe them off. He'll touch things he knows he shouldn't touch , the word "no" has become his absolute favourite but only if it's coming out of his mouth and he has a love/hate relationship with everyone and isn't shy about telling you when you're not in favour for that 3 minute period. 

So Miss P and I  had a chat about why Little P does some of the things he does.    This stuff is my bread and butter. I have conversations like this with other people at least three times a day in my work life. And I often use an example to illustrate what I'm trying to say.

So I explained to Miss P that she has to imagine Little P is a cup. He's learning things all the time. Every experience, every movement,  every interaction, every emotion he has every day goes into the cup to be emptied into different parts of his brain when he goes to sleep at night so he can store it away and bring it out to use another time. That's how kids learn stuff and retain knowledge. 

But sometimes the cup gets full or something goes into the cup during the day  that doesn't make sense or that can't wait until night time to be sorted into his mental filing cabinet, and the cup spills over. He needs help to process what has spilled out of the cup right there and then. And often that's when "Houston,  we have a meltdown" happens. And part of helping a child to re-fill their cup is to stay as calm as possible because if you don't, they're going to take that experience and file it away and it's going to come back and bite you later. 

Miss P nodded in all the right places with only an occasional eye glazing over. I think she got it but I wasn't really sure. Maybe I made her cup spill over.  But I came away hoping that I had helped her realise that when Little P is being difficult to get along with that it's not personal. He isn't doing things with the conscious intent to piss her off. He's just learning how the world works and where he sits in it all.  

Fast forward to Wednesday when I got this email at work with the subject line "The cup is full. The cup is full" 

That's Miss P's new makeup that she hadn't even used yet....And the text that accompanied this message?

"The cup is full! My damn cup is full!!"

Funniest thing that happened all week. And the best thing? She gets it! Or at least she did till he got a bit unruly during after tea play and smacked her with a bottle. I believe he got sent to bed to "process" the days events at that point. You have to know when to fold. 

Today is oven D Day and my oven fixit guy still hasn't shown up yet , which is a pity because I've already mixed 15 cakes to go into that oven.