I just had to post this. Mara has reached the point where she is pretty intuitive and is able to connect the dots.
We went to Red Robin for dinner and every time we go we get balloons. Well, when walking out I had seen that Mara was taking the string from the balloon and wrapping it around her finger about twenty times. At a later point I said to her that she should not wrap the string around her finger like that. Of course the patent three year old question arose.
“Why?”
“Well, because you can cut off the circulation to your finger and hurt it, then we will have to go to the doctor and have them cut your thumb off when it doesn’t work anymore. You wouldn’t want to have your thumb cut off would you?” I said.
“No,” Mara replied.
Sometimes you have to go to extremes to get children to listen, right? OK, yeah, it was a little morbid. And writing it here makes me think I really shouldn’t have done it. But, I did.
Later on the ride home we were chatting. Then Campbell piped up complaining about something. With his balloon I had tied it on the outside of his jacket around his arm pit and shoulder. He doesn’t like having it tied because he wants to just hold it, so if you tie it he complains and cries. If you just hand it to him he loses the balloon within minutes to the sky gods, so at that point he cries. A lose lose situation of course.
Anyways, he was complaining and yanking on the string, and generally motioning to the balloon.
I said, “What, did you keep pulling on the string and get it tight around your arm so that now it hurts?”
And all I heard was, “We’re gonna have to cut his arm off. Yeah, Campbell, we’re gonna have to cut your arm off little buddy.”