This One?

Ed and I were out drawing with his chaulk yesterday. Chaulk sure has seen some improvements since I was a kid. They are these huge pieces in a multitude of colors. He'll draw a couple lines and squiggles, but it's more for the experience at this point. When he does decide to draw with abandon, he will be fully equipped, as you can see from the stack.

When we picked Ed up from nursery school on Friday, Den wondered aloud how they get the kids to fall asleep on these mats reminiscent of my kindergarten nap map. So today I asked. The teacher said that they lay them down and pat/rub their backs. She then quickly followed this by commenting that Ed doesn't like his back rubbed, or to be touched, but he does want someone nearby.

This made me laugh as I realized, for one of the first times, that what we do with him, even as an infant has impacts later on. As you may recall from posts a year ago, we couldn't do cry it out (CIO) with Ed, so we did gradual extinction, which basically was allowing him to fall alseep with us next to him, with him basically laying on our arm. Over time, this changed to us just sitting in the room, to the point now where we just set him down. It kind of cracks me up that now he doesn't want his back rubbed, but then also makes me wonder what else has happened to him these first 18/19 months that will manifest itself later (hopefully not in therapy sessions).