Cobadopters, Va-lella, & Mother of the Year

Oh, the world of 3 year old speak.  I love it.  This morning, before eating breakfast, G had to get his audience all situated.  In front of him, in the center of the table, sat his "cobadopter", his "top-in-the-hat", as well as his "lightening a-queen".  For those to don't speak Garrett, "cobadopter" would be helicopter; "top-in-the-hat" would be Sir Topenhat from the Thomas series, and "lightening a-queen, is, of course, Lightening McQueen from Cars.  He hasn't even seen the moving Cars (why?  I don't know since he loves all things cars and racing) but since his buddies have one, it became great incentive to poop in the potty. 

That's right, blogworld, I bribe my child.  And by golly, it works. 

After the oatmeal, we moved on to Va-lella yogurt.  "Va-lella" is one of those words that's just too cute to correct.  I hope he says it va-lella when he's 12.  Or at least 4.

JuliaStitches and I just returned from a lovely morning at the park.  The boys had fun, Garrett made a new friend.  Her name is Girl.  He hasn't stopped talking about her since she left a few minutes before we did.  I think he could have been falling in love.  Don't know if she would compare to his "Kelly" (his imaginary friend...you'll hear a lot about her from me), but "Girl" was a pretty close second.  Anyway, I always amazes me when in public places how utterly oblivious parents can be.  Or maybe it's selective oblivion. 

There was a mother there, with at least 3 children.  2 of whom were completely out of control.  The 3rd was quite well behaved.  Granted, he was no more than 3 months old.  But the older 2?  Crazy.  Mother of the Year was entirely too busy chatting it up with various other mothers to pay any amount of attention to her children.  Now, I'm totally not a "cobadopter" mom - hovering over the boys - but I do know (most of the time) where they are and roughly what they're doing.  JuliaStitches and I had a wonderful conversation, all the while keeping track of all 3 big boys.  Mother of the Year? Not so much.  Not only did she bounce from mother to mother having in depth conversations, but majority of the time she stood with her back to the playground and to her boys.  Which is why, after another mother got my attention asking if it was G (which, thankfully for him it wasn't!) I had to go tell her that her child was running around the playground, hitting other kids with a stick.  A stick which was easily 3 feet long and 1.5" diameter.

He joined us at our picnic table (which was fine) and proceeded to touch every item he could reach, and even grabbed the plastic wrap and dumped JuliaStitches' sandwich on the ground.  And all Mom of the Year did was continually say, "S, no touch."  Seriously?  Your child is THREE YEARS OLD!  Get some control, give your children a little attention, as well as a few boundaries.  Your current discipline methods (or lack thereof) are obviously not working.

I thought it when I was teaching, and I still do...you should totally have to pass a test and get a license before procreating.