Dropping and Other Fun Games

You know that fun game where your toddler keeps dropping/throwing stuff off of his/her high chair to make mommy or daddy get it. Over and over and over again? Yeah, well, we're playing it. I asked a mom at daycare how you know when dropping things goes from cause & effect discovery to "hey, how many times will mommy pick this up?" and she said, "oh, you'll know."

I do. Because now my son gets this look on his face and WAITS for me to be watching him before dropping items off the chair. He gets a sort of half-smile, eyebrows raised, mischevious "are you watching?" expression and then holds the item in question over the floor as if to say "should I drop it? should I drop it?" If it's food sometimes my uh-uh, no-no! works and he puts it in his mouth or on his tray. Toys just go straigt over so he can hear the clatter of them hitting the ground.

This "is-she-seeing-me-misbehave-can-I-make-her-say-no" game has now extended to slapping the TV screen, taking all the CD's out of the CD tower, throwing his cup, etc. I tried a little reverse psychology this weekend and pretended not to see him touching the TV screen and it worked. He slapped it once and searched around for something else to grab my attention. Unfortunately this same tactic failed in the feeding chair this evening as, even though he did not get a reaction out of me... he enjoyed watching the dogs scramble and enjoyed the splat of the food too much. Oh well... win some, lose some, right?

He has graduated to some very fun games (fun for BOTH of us, I mean) too and it's just a ball. He is playing what my mom named the "goodbye game" where he crawls into the bathroom and shuts the door as we say "bye bye!" Then he opens the door so we can all shout "hello!" He even enjoys variations where we hide from him while the door is shut so that when he opens the door and sees no one, he crawls out excitedly (you can HEAR him breathing excitedly) so you can jump out and say "boo!" The other variation he opens the door JUUUUUST a crack so you can peek at him and say "peek-aboo." He can play this game for nearly an hour. I'm serious.

He seems to love games that involve suspsense. He likes us to duck down while he's on the changing table and then pop up and scare him. He also likes it when I sing-song what I'm doing in a VERY QUIET voice and then all of a sudden shout "blughaghagh" in the middle of the song. I love just thinking of new ways to surprise him.

Of course... he seems to enjoy thinking up new games to test me. Ah the joys of motherhood.