"Kiss the Baby"

Dear Random Lady,

No.

My three month old neither wants nor needs kisses from your toddler. I'm sure in your eyes, your child is the shit, but that doesn't mean I want his germy mouth on my baby.

Since we've never been introduced or had even a cursory conversation (and you didn't bother to ask my or my baby's name before instructing your son to kiss him), let me tell you something about our family: we believe in bodily autonomy. We don't believe in forcing kisses and we sure as shit don't believe in kissing strangers to appease their parents' sense of what would be really cute to see.

As mothers of boys, I think it's especially important that we teach them about consent from the get-go. That doesn't mean we have to discuss sex with toddlers, but it does mean that we probably shouldn't be instructing them to show physical affection to strangers with no regard for the strangers themselves.

Luckily for you, your son showed better judgement than you did and was about as interested in giving kisses as mine was in getting them. That saved us both from making an awkward scene at another kid's birthday party. Bully for us.

Neither of our children are dolls. They're not there for you to play pretend with. If you want to make things kiss for your own amusement, go buy some Barbies and leave my baby out of it.

My three month old can't speak for himself. It's my job to be his voice until he has one of his own. So on his behalf, let me just say:

Kindly back the fuck up.

Genius Toddler, Part 1: Drawing Things, Counting & Knowing Stuff

So, I was going to do another Genius Baby post, but it occurs to me that my little monster isn't really a baby anymore. He's growing up so damned fast. Maybe a little too fast. Slow down, kid.

It was actually a few months ago that he drew his first thing. Which was the sun. Which I know only because he told me. Since then, he's been content just to scribble. Until yesterday, when he drew a plane. To be clear, this plane is also a big scribble. But one which, to him, represents a plane. I have no idea when kids are "supposed" to be able to draw actual things, He may be right on track, hell, he might even be behind. But, biased as I am, I'm still super impressed.

Also, he can recite numbers up to 6, read numbers up to 7 and count actual objects up to 3. I read that the actual understanding of what numbers represent comes between age two and three, so I guess he's a little ahead of the game there.

With letters, he can read a bunch phonetically, although to be fair, he does get P and B mixed up, especially when they're lowercase. F is by far the easiest to recognize, but 9 times out of 10, he gets U, O, R, C, M & N right, too.  A few weeks ago, he read a sign that says "fox" out loud, but I'm pretty certain he recognized the shape of the word, rather than reading it; it was in a similar font to one of his books. Mr. Wolfman has asked me why I'm teaching him this stuff so young, but honestly, it's because he wants to learn. The monster points out every letter he sees and when we sit to colour, he asks me to draw letters (sometimes specific ones, sometimes he points to the paper and says "Lett-er!") over and over.

Probably my favourite accomplishment of his in the past little while: he now uses the word "Me". Like when he wants something "Me! Me!" I know that one is right on par for his age, but for him to have such a clear understanding of himself and how he's separate from others is so super cool.

It's astounding to me how fast he's learning and growing.