Nose

Dear Elijah,

My dear...dear dear dear Eli.  My beautiful first born son who I adore. 
Thank you for challenging me day in and day out.

Tonight we got home from Grandma's house where we spent time with your cousins. You were in your glory like I've never seen before.  I'm guessing this will start to happen more and more as you are getting old enough to understand the special places we go and return to with all the people who love you.  You are so tired and so full of candy and treats that you even threw up a little bit in the car.  What a trooper you are-you caught it in your hand so we didn't even have to pull over. 

You are so committed to challenging your dad and me.  Recently you have realized you could put your finger in your nose and it would get you attention.  You don't mind that it is negative attention.  This is just a disgusting habit I will not put up with and I am going to teach you this as soon as possible.  So tonight as I was putting you to bed you were sticking your finger in your nose.  After I asked you 3 times nicely to stop I needed to do something to teach you that I wasn't going to allow you to continue to pick your nose.  So I told you I would take Teddy downstairs if you didn't stop by the time I counted to 3. You kept it up.   So I took Teddy and brought him downstairs.  It hurt my heart and I KNOW it was tough on you because you had brought Earl up North and so you have been missing your little teddy all weekend. 

So I'm sorry.  And I want you to know that the only reason I am blogging about this is that someday (in the far far future) when you read this you will understand how much I love you and that this wasn't easy for me.  It's my way of telling you that we went through hard things together but that you became a healthy boy, a respectful gentleman and a fun friend.  It is the right thing for you.  Sometimes the things I want to teach you will be the things that will cause me to lose sleep over and worryworryworry about and I'll always wonder if I did it right.

I didn't put you in timeout because the bedtime routine would have never recovered.  I couldn't take away something for tomorrow because you wouldn't remember and it would lose it's power.  I want to teach you the right things and I don't always have the right ways.  Although this was about picking your nose, it really was about how you didn't listen after I asked gently 3 times.  I don't want it to take 3 times, because that's me allowing you to do something naughty 3 times before there are consequences.  You will start to learn that nothing will happen the first 3 times.  That's no good!   

So we let you cry yourself to sleep tonight without Teddy.  But you still had your Earl for comfort and I know in the morning you will either remember what happened and hopefully have learned something, or you will have forgotten and will have moved on.  Either way I know that when you are 25 you won't remember this night and although that should lift the weight on my heart tonight I will still need to remind myself in 25 years that this is hopefully the start of learning something.  Maybe.  

I love you to the moon and back...and then some more. 
Love,
Mom