dilemma.

If I can't see or hear Carter... there's trouble. I may have mentioned this before-- oh a thousand times or so. He is my child who writes on things, finds the scissors, and wants to glue pieces of paper (that he ripped) back together...by himself. Yikes. I'm laughing now, that I thought I was such a stellar mother with Hannah. "Oh, my daughter never writes on anything!" I used to think to myself. She doesn't get into the scissors. Yeah, that has NOTHING to do with good parenting. It's totally a personality trait. (Or so I tell myself to feel better about the fact that my kids are OUT OF CONTROL!)





But anyways, back to Carter.





He's curious, and independent. Bad combo.





Now for his latest shenanigan. So I come down stairs the other day because, as I mentioned, I couldn't see or hear Carter, and that's a bad thing. He's in the kitchen. Sitting on the floor, and in front of him is my bag of grated cheddar cheese, the tortillas, my kitchen SHEARS, and cheese confetti all over the floor. In his little chubby fingers is a folded up tortilla with cold grated cheddar inside. Before I can respond to the expensive cheese mess, he looks up at me and says: "I make a quesadilla!" (Which we'd had the night before... apparently he's a fan)


It stops me short of my scolding. "Wow, Carter!" I say to him, "you are so independent, but please do not cut my grated cheese open from the bottom and then let it spew out all over the floor! Okay?" He raises his eyebrows as he nods and smiles. Oh, yeah. He's definitely doing this again. And he has by the way, several times.





It really is quite cute, by the way. There is absolutely no malice involved. He just wants a quesadilla, he doesn't want to bother mom, so he comes down stairs to make himself one, but those darn zip-lock tops are so hard to undo, so he just cuts open the tortillas and cheese from the bottom with mom's not-so-well-hidden kitchen shears. Lovely.





And it makes me wonder. How do I encourage him to develop these traits in him: his independence, his problem solving skills, his creativity, and also convey to him that I really really don't want him cutting open my cheese FROM THE BOTTOM! This is one of my biggest challenges as a mother. I'm sure all mother's deal with this. Wanting to encourage their children's individuality, their personality, and not have grated cheese spread all across the kitchen floor.





Was it unreasonable that I wanted to pick all the dirt and hair out of the cheese and put it back in the bag? 4 dollars worth of cheese... come on people.






I didn't, by the way.