In the interest of telling a story I am also going to open a can of worms. Rather, a bucket of worms in the mommyblog-o-world.

Rusty and I don’t practice spanking or swatting as a regular form of discipline. Lots of thought and reflection, as well as the education that comes with having a bachelor’s degree in psychology have gone into making that choice. I think there is a place for swatting young kids, but I don’t plan on doing it regularly, plus, it would probably end up being useless with Norah.

Once I swatted her hand because she was just being a defiant little booger. She glared at me and then continued with her actions. And once I swatted her butt. She was walking toward the street while I was putting the car seat I ran over to her, swatted her butt (not hard) and said “No! We do NOT go into the street without Mama or Daddy!”

It worked that time. She cried for a long time, and for the next thirty minutes would shoot dirty looks at me before crying again. Jasmine was there, and Isaiah too. It was pitiful and a little bit funny. But that’s the extent of our swatting experience. I use other discipline techniques, like positive reinforcement and redirection. Oh, and time out.

I really thought that time out was working ok. Norah has gotten to where she will sit in her corner until I tell her to get up, and usually she stops doing whatever she was doing that put her in time out in the first place.

However, I am losing my faith in the usefulness of timeout. On Monday I was watching Isaiah at my house. He and Norah were playing with those giant Lego things, and he started throwing them at me. I used all the tools I could think of to get him to stop before I lost an eyeball (he throws hard!) but he wasn’t listening. So I took the block from him and put him in timeout. Before I could even turn around Norah ran up behind me, slapped me in the butt and then laughed and sat herself in time out right next to Isaiah!

So I’m thinking that time out is really not that effective with Norah. She thinks its a game: Slap Your Mom and Sit in the Fun Corner

I don’t know what I’m going to do with that girl.

My teeny tiny itty bitty (15 month old) baby is walking. I’ve waxed on about it here.

Really walking. None of this one or two step playing around. She can walk from the living room to the bedroom to the kitchen. She also destroys everything in her path. I guess she has been walking for a while, but I’m just now getting around to writing about it. I needed a little time to sit with it, the walking.

I remember once, when Norah was just a few days old, crying about how fast she was growing. I was sitting on the couch holding her and watching TV and some commercial came on, something about growing up or grandkids or kids getting cars. Or maybe it was a commercial about apple pie. It’s anyone’s guess really, because I cried about everything for a good two weeks after her birth. Anyway, the commercial made me cry because it made me realize that Norah was 5 days old and that was so old and she was only going to be 5 days old for a few more hours and then she would NEVER be 5 days old again! Good gracious, at that rate I was going to be a grandma within the month and I was not ready to be a grandma!

So I just sat there and held my tiny baby and cried about becoming a grandma. It was strange.

Sitting there on that couch over a year ago I didn’t even want to think about Norah walking. I just could not imagine how that could be fun or exciting. I’ve had several people tell me that I would grow up with Norah, that I would eventually get past the weepy stuff, the crying about the growing baby. I thought it was all crazy talk. But I’ve come to find that it is true. I have grown up with Norah, and when I watched her face light up as she walked between Jasmine and me or Rusty and me, crashing into us and giggling, there was nothing but love and awe and excitement. As much as I loved having a newborn, I may love having a 1 year old even more.

Readers, what are your experiences with growing up with your kids?