Every week at Maggie's gym class she is rewarded at the end of the class with a stamp of a cartoon doggy, or other similar creature, on her hands and toes. I think it might be the highlight of the class actually, you should see all the kids streak to the stamp corner and position themselves sweetly one by one on the red mat that sits there. Two year olds patiently waiting their turn, it's a tiny miracle every single Tuesday.
Because I know how much she loves these stamps, when I found a Hello Kitty stamp at Target for a buck (self inking) I snatched it up for her and put it in her stocking at Christmas. Even though she enjoyed the "Kitty!", I don't think she really figured out it was a stamp until last week. Since them I have caught her trying to stamp the wall, the coffee table, the sink, and the floor. I try not to take it away from her because this early in the game I think it's kinda my fault for not explaining the Calhoun rules on stamping to her. So instead of removal I tried reasoning, "Maggie baby, we do not stamp on the walls and furniture, that's not nice. We can only stamp on paper, our hands, and our body." Well, when she heard that she gave me a funny look and promptly stamped her (diapered) hoo-haa. I'm all like, um, well OK, I guess that counts as your body.
A couple days later we went through this same conversation when I caught her trying to stamp the window. "Remember what Mommy said? You can only stamp on paper and on your body." And again, she stamped her hoo-haa! So now I'm like, there must be something I'm missing, and it's my turn to give her a funny look. Then it dawned on me. The thinks I'm telling her she can only stamp her POTTY! Potty and body must sound awfully similar to a kid who can't seem to add consonants to the ends of her words.
I quickly changed "body" to "belly" and have since had no inappropriate stamping. I did however put a child to bed last night with about forty pink kitty stamps all over her abdomen. Oh, and the "only on paper" approach isn't foolproof either. She found the one piece of paper in the entire house that I would really rather not stamped - the one that lines the inside of the bathroom cabinet so you can't see all our toilet paper and cleaning supplies while you pee in our house - and stamped the hell out of it. What was once a nice, grown-up, half bathroom is now covered in Hello Kitty stamps and contains not only Maggie's potty seat, but her dolly's potty seat, a toy sink, two children's step stools, and many children's books. The older these kids get the more their crap permeates throughout the house. It's kinda like termites I think.
1 comment:
I seem to remember a little girl that stamped a Pretty Pony stamp on her brand new wallpaper in her bedroom. Those were the days when the ink was permanent on paper. Luckily the wallpaper was of a rainbow, so I guess she thought the Pretty Pony was an appropriate addition to an otherwise boring wall that only had a spectacular, colorful rainbow on it. Like mother, like daughter me thinks!
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