About cars and becoming mainstream-ish

Do you remember me whining about our son's love for cars a few months ago and about my struggle to buy him one? Well, a lot has changed since then.

First of all, let me clarify that I have totally nothing against mainstream parents (what is a mainstream parenting, anyway?), I just had this idea of being an extra-ordinary alternative parent who would be raising a "super-human baby". Sometimes I was wondering why all people don't want to have "super babies", but then I realized that if everyone was extra-ordinary, then it would become a norm...and not everybody wishes for their child to stand out, neither does the state wish that (most of the society has to be sheep-ish if we want the state system work, right?). But somehow I am also becoming mainstream-ish and there is probably nothing wrong with that, only maybe we might not have a son with super-abilities :)

So...back to the cars...

Teodor going to eat

My idea of playing with cars as an "useless" fun came from the book Montessori from the Start where the authors stated that an 18-month-old child doing zoom zoom (in our case: brm-brm) gains totally nothing useful from it. Having a 19-month old I can say it is not true (noticed some time ago, not only now). He learns how to push the cars, which one fits in the Melissa and Doug house (only 2, the other ones are just way too big and it really frustrates him), which one can go under the Grimm's rainbow arc, that Charlie wouldn't push the car back...

He still doesn't have a pile of cars, but in our opinion he has more than enough. He loves to bring them all to the dining table, park them on the other side than where he is sitting and then he tends to say "brm brm" and I'm supposed to know which one he wants to play with while eating. After he's done with eating, he brings them all back to the living room. Luckily, he no longer wants to sleep with them as it is quite painful to be unintentionally hit by a plastic car. Btw. the cars and Schleich animals are his only pure plastic toys. Fun fact, he had a peeing accident today because he couldn't choose which car he wants to take to the bathroom with him :) At some point it is cute, at some, really annoying. For example this night, at 4am, he said brm brm and went to play...

I would take a picture of all of his cars if I had a camera for you to see how many he has...I am pretty sure that most boys have more. But having around 7 cars is more than enough for him. 

I gave up on no screen time ever. It happened one weekend a few months? ago when we needed to clean fast and didn't need a helping toddler around, so we sat him in front of youtube and let him watch some songs. The youtube slowly creep-ed into our every day routine; he watches youtube songs in the morning for some time while I'm drinking my tea and slowly wake up and sometimes in the evening when I need to cook, he is hungry and tired, therefore very difficult to entertain. The end justifies the means (feed him asap and get him to bed), I suppose. I haven't noticed he would be falling asleep any worse than if he doesn't watch anything (it was written in different places that screen time before bed is not a good idea). 

I remember visiting a friend with a 2.5 year-old son at that time (Teodor was 4 months old) and she told me she let him watch some youtube for some time during the day to get some peace. I thought it was a stupid reasoning...now I get it. I really enjoy my 20 minutes of peace in the morning to drink my tea or just to lie a bit longer in bed (but mostly I'm sitting next to him and he's telling me what he's seeing). Another friend told me a few days ago that she watches TV with her daughter from time to time, they sit together, they talk about what they're seeing, they cuddle...what's so harmful about that, right? I sometimes feel like being the only entertainer together with a few toys is sometimes quite demanding job, even though he watches youtube very rarely during the day (like when I was really sick and needed to take an extra nap, I let him watch). 

The last thing I'm feeling like being a very ordinary person are his/our eating habits. He eats totally what I eat, so no more buckwheat, no more super-healthy stuff on his plate...just ordinary food. I'm a bit disappointed about it but not that much that I would really want to do something about it, like changing our eating habits because he wants to eat what we eat (no more salt in our food - even the dad is getting used to it). Of course, I don't give him cookies on regular basis (still try to keep sugar to minimum) or some really junk food, but you know, bulgur is not on menu very often any more.

The very last mainstream-ish thing, which has already been in our lives for some months, are disposable diapers. It all started when we were in CZ in June and since then I ditched cloth diapers, we used all those bio-degradable, but then I decided "screw it" and we use Pampers, the worst out of the worst for our environment. Fortunately, he is more or less potty trained, so we used them only for trips to the city and at night.