Independence

I'm at a crossroads these days with Taj.  Daily I debate in my head how much to let him explore his environment and how much I try to control the mess I KNOW he will make.  Today I decided to relax (or rather sit and see how long it would take Rob to intervene) and let him explore.  We were at the OB's office and they recently got a new water cooler.  When you are there every month and then every week, you notice these slight differences.  And so did Taj.  At first it was cute watching Rob and Taj drink their water, but whenever Rob refilled Taj's water cup he made him close his eyes so he wouldn't learn the secret to how water magically got into his cup.  Sadly, that only lasted so long. 

A guy came in with his wife and you can tell he's not chasing a toddler around in his spare time because he let out the big secret. Taj studied this guy and quickly learned just what button to push to have water flowing into his cup and else where. I would like to add, Taj isn't the best at drinking from a cup because of my issues with controlling my environment.  Therefore we choose to keep things nice and clean...ie. sippy cups.

Once Taj learned the button, he was over at the water cooler every 10 seconds to fill up his cup with a sip of water. By the time we were done Taj had water covering the front of his shirt.  Of course with exploration, there is mess.   Taj ended up dumping small (although it felt large) portion of his water out on the floor and yelled "mess" although Rob swears his heard Taj say "shit."  Ironically that is what Rob yelled as soon as he got up to intervene.