Some whine with that cheese?

Matthew has taken to whining. It is charming and lovely to suddenly hear his sweet darling little voice pitch into a whiny fervor over the amount of mashed potatoes I gave him or "Matthew go outside for feather" even though we should have left five minutes ago for daycare and holy shit we are going to be late for work! I hardly noticed that he started whining until recently. It dawned on me when I heard Kevin say "you need to stop using that voice because I cannot understand you when you talk like that." I was all in the dark about the whining thing. Like 'OMG my son whines' (scoff...)

As if this was not ever going to happen - just like the nine million other things I always said pre-child that MY child would not do! Ha, we are SO naive before having a baby, aren't we?!

All kids whine really - I mean all kids do things you hope they do not do like throw temper tantrums in public (yeah, because we have had an resurgence in this: Kroger last evening and Wonderlab on Wednesday.) I am laughing as I type this for two reasons. One: The looks people give you when your little darlin' is screaming bloody murder because you would not let him play with the bottles of wine on the bottom shelf of the alcohol isle. Two: Because when we went to Touch a Truck, this little girl was throwing a wicked good temper tantrum which everyone turned to watch. Matthew & I and another mom & her son were sitting under the shade of a tree having a drink and the mom turned to me and said "we all know they have them and know how it feels but aren't you glad that is not us right now?!" I nodded and truly agreed with her at that point.

I have to say that of all the things that could possibly annoy a person - you know, nails on the chalkboard, temper tantrums, a whiny child - miraculously my short tempered, impatient self does not get annoyed with whining. Perhaps I have been listening to myself my whole life so I am just used to it... What ever the case may be, I am oddly and uncharacteristically calm when it comes to the whine that my son emits.

We are not really making a big deal out of the whine. We are just using common sense to deal with it but it is a new "stage"!

On a separate but related note, why is when our children were babies we were all into the stages of development and excitedly wanted to tell everyone about how brillant our babies were but as toddlers, the stages all involve some new and painful lesson in Parenting 101:
How to deal with whining.
How to deal with temper tantrums.
How to get your child to go to the potty.
How to get your child to sleep in a big kid bed.
How to run away screaming because I am having information overload and my child is getting to all the stages I don't want and not getting to the stages I do want!

So I ask you would you like some whinnnnne with that cheese? Bring it on, baby, bring it on!