Cutting fingernails...

As usual, its been awhile.  Between K-man's recovery, changing jobs, and travel arrangements... I have been busy.  The good news is that there were no repeated seizures!  The bad news, my little man is growing day by day and sometimes it feels like its happening too fast!  He's finally standing and walking while holding an adult hand.  He has definitely graduated from cruising but finds it faster to get about on his hands and knees.

Today I had to practically assault him to cut his nails!  He cried and cried and although I had given him the nail cutter for a few minutes - he was adamant that I was inflicting some sort of terrible punishment on him.  The good news is that soon after his bath, his nails cut, and his annoyance ceased with a good bottle of milk - he fell into a deep deep sleep.  Finally, I can relax!

I think it's really important to let your child be frustrated.  I was reading Pamela Drucker's Bringing up Bébé and she puts a lot of the common sense we feel into a good context.  Children need to have boundaries from time to time in order to establish their own responses.  If he's going to be terribly upset that I'm cutting his nails, and I stop - then how will he be one day when he's upset about something else?  As human beings we are constantly determining where our wills end and the rest of the world begins.  The sooner the better that he understand that when Mommy says 'No', she means it.  The super bad news, I just have to wait two or three more days to repeat the process as his nails tend to grow very quickly.  It's bad news because I find it incredibly hard to listen to him wail and cry.  The good news, I'll have another opportunity to teach him a lesson in frustration.

With so many spoilt kids out there, lets see how mine fares!