I was the cliché mom/woman this morning as I headed out the door for work and realized my keys were nowhere to be found in my purse. I dug through it several times with a growing sense of dread as I started to remember Ellie wandering off with my keys the previous afternoon when we got home.
I'm trying to work with Ellie on compromise and patience. So instead of telling her "no" all the time I've been trying to reward her for asking nicely for things (i.e. asking 'please' instead of just grunting or pointing at what she wants...) or for waiting while I get something done. My keys are highly coveted in her world. Each day when I bring her home from daycare she gets so excited about them and asks over and over to have them. Our current routine has been that she has to wait while I unlock the door, and then she gets to hold them for a minute while I set down the 10 things I'm carrying and let the dogs out.
Well... yesterday she wandered off with the keys and I completely spaced about it. That made for a frantic search this morning as Brian and I tried to discern the most likely place a 19-month-old would store a set of keys. Quite a riddle.
The low point was when I started digging through the kitchen trash after realizing there was a good possibility she put them in there trying to be helpful. (I might need to accelerate the lesson on how a dirty tissue is different from other things that aren't supposed to go in the trash, such as mom's contact case, her blocks and the occasional sippy cup.)
The high point was when Brian found the keys a minute later. They were flung into a small space between the sideboard and the wall in our dining room. Can't think I didn't look there first...?
Oh well, at least the keys were located. But I'll have to find a new prop for my lessons with Ellie.
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