Cheek to Cheek (Adventures of L-Plate Gran)

Christmas preparations are underway at You must be mad's house. Little G and Small  have helped to lug home a very big tree which looked a lot smaller in the market, and then helped decorate it. Small's contribution has been to pull off all the decorations within reach on the lower boughs, so the tree now has a rather lopsided look.

Little G keeps dropping hints about my present in a 'not-telling-you' sort of way, eg:

Little G: What is your favourite colour?
Me:        Orange.
Little G: That's the colour of your present!

Meanwhile, Small is starting to push the boundaries, as those books on child-rearing put it. The pushing involves things like dropping food off his highchair/being told to stop/doing his sad 'lip' gesture/ then dropping more food .... slowly and deliberately .... while staring at you. He has also mastered the art of reaching out behind his back to touch something that he has been told not to touch. He is turning into a cheeky little monkey, as the books on child-rearing don't put it.

You must be mad and I are the discipline duo. We absolutely refuse to be defeated by an under-two on a wind-up mission. Small, on the other hand, clearly sees our reactions as part of the game. Neither of us have any experience in raising boys, and the sort of brisk telling-off that would reduce Little G to floods of tears, washes off Small like water off a seal. Frankly, my dear, he simply couldn't give a damn.

We are both hoping it is a phase. Like Little G's phase of ritual burping. She rarely does it now. Meanwhile we continue to admonish Small, and he continues to run rings round us. You can see him sizing us up behind his innocent 'what, me?' face, while L-Plate Grandad (Small's favourite person out of the two of us) tries not to laugh.

It's a battle, that's for sure. But we all love Small too much to let him win. On the plus side though, I am mentally stocking up on a lot of 'when you were very little' stories to use as embarrassing ammo when Small turns into a teenager. My day may not have arrived yet, but it will surely come.
Oh yes.