Cheerio stompers

We're getting more and more accustomed to our beautiful, perfect baby girl turning into an opinionated, demanding, misbehaving toddler. This morning started out well enough--Charlie slept through the whole night without fussing (there was an extended period of playing with her musical Glo Worm before she fell asleep last night, but nothing too horrible). This morning she was in good spirits, especially after a little morning mommy milk. The AM nursing session is on-again-off-again, and ever since she had a stomach bug 2 weeks ago, we're back on-again for a while I guess. Anyway, back to the story.

She picked out her own outfit from the closet--a half red/half purple corduroy jumper with a matching top printed with mice wearing clown costumes. I believe it came from the stash of garage sale finds from my mother-in-law. To complete the little jester outfit, I added warm white tights and her shiny red ankle boots (a $3 find on the clearance rack at Walmart). I bought the shoes thinking they'd make decent puddle stompers for spring time, since they appear to be made of relatively water-resistant vinyl (they're actually really cute, in a way that only such shoes for a toddler could be). It turns out they make good Cheerio stompers too.

I took her downstairs and sat her at her kid-sized table for first breakfast (she's a hobbit, remember, and eats at least 2 breakfasts most days...). I provided the halfling with a cup of dry cheerios and a dried apricot, both of which she seemed to enjoy, and started packing my lunch. Apparently the Cheerios make for interesting experiments in gravity as well as snacking--she was soon shaking them all of the table (and floor). M., my husband, was down by now and we both were taking turns telling Charlie to pick up her Cheerios, and not to brush them onto the floor. That actually worked for a while.

Then she hopped herself down off the chair, crushing a Cheerio under her boot as she hit the ground. Cheerios, when smashed, explode into little, lightly sticky, dust balls which then adhere to your shoes. We again admonished our little darling and had her help pick up the remaining Cheerios off the floor, with our help (she did actually comply). But as soon as our backs were both turned, Charlie picked more cheerios out of her cup, and was deliberately placing them on the floor to step on. She got yelled at (well, more like a firm "NO") and had her Cheerio privileges revoked for the morning. She sat down and threw a temper tantrum as only a toddler can--pounding fists onto the floor and everything.

It's kind of neat when Charlotte misbehaves. Some of her antics are really quite funny, and some are darnright clever. It takes a lot of effort some days not to laugh at her, since that won't really help enforce the rules. We do have a nice lady named Ruth who cleans our house once a month, and today happens to be her day. So the Cheerio remains should be gone by the time we get home. But I suppose that if/when the Cheerio stompers make an encore appearance, that we'll be the ones mopping them up.