Negotiating with a 2 year old!?

Both little boys are sleeping and I feel like I might need to do the same thing too!  I think running around after my "spirited" toddler is more exhausting than waking up in the night with a newborn.

Negotiating with someone under three is hard. 

• "If you eat your food, than you can do this..." (PLEASE eat your food).  
• "If you don't wash your hands than we can't do this..." (you WILL wash your hands).  
• Every day explaining why we take pajamas off  "BUT we'll let you wear them tonight."
• "If you're a good boy I'll give you 2 Thomas stickers" (PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE be a good boy)

A lot of our negotiations happen around food.  If our little man doesn't like the look of it, he won't eat it.  If he doesn't touch it, then he gets really hungry (extra hyper and wild) and well, life gets more interesting then.

All he ate for dinner tonight was about a huge plate of cucumbers with garlic and vinegar, two bites of cornbread (our friend made it and it was delicious!) and some juice.  I'm glad he ate his veggies.  But not so happy that nothing else was consumed!  We even did the whole, "if you eat two more bites of cornbread you can watch some TV."  He ate one more bite.  And then we spent the rest of the evening explaining why we weren't going to let him watch TV.  He asked for more cucumbers about 5 times.  So hey, at least he ate a lot of those!?

The first time around with a baby, I thought things were difficult.  The second time around, I realize babies can be easy.  Negotiating with two year old's takes talent, humour, grace and lots of patience.  

These toys have been thrown, decapitated, lugged around here and there, stepped on by strangers in buses and are loved.

They match

I LOVED listening to them!  Very special.

Playing a sort of badminton without racquets.

He likes to invade the cot.

And loves to snuggle his brother.