STATUS REPORT
Child: 2 years, 1 month
Parent: Operational
Coffee: 0
Blueberries: Deployed
Greek Yogurt: Mission Critical
Tantrums: 1 (Resolved)
Television Privileges: Temporarily Suspended
Emergency Room Visits: 0
CPS Calls: 0
Controlled Substances: None
Handoffs: Successful
System Status: Stable
Daycare sent everyone home with their summer camp supplies since the last day was tomorrow. I expected artwork or little projects. Instead, it was mostly spare clothes.
Operational logistics.
Back at the apartment we settled into our usual routine. She grabbed But Not the Hippopotamus, and before I could finish the first page she was already pointing excitedly.
“Hippo!”
Every appearance earned another enthusiastic:
“Hippo!”
Language is starting to attach itself to the world now. The vocabulary isn’t exploding overnight. It’s accumulating one object at a time.
While she watched Fucker and Friends, I unpacked her lunchbox and packed tomorrow’s lunch for the final day of camp.
When I asked,
“Eat eat?”
she echoed it right back.
“Eat eat.”
The high chair was still at my parents’ place, so dinner happened on a barstool at the kitchen island. I served rotisserie chicken, roti, and blueberries.
She immediately performed quality assurance.
Blueberries passed inspection.
Everything else failed.
I tried warming up some milk. No luck. She was more interested in watching her show than eating, so I switched the television off.
Immediate protest.
Tears.
No negotiation.
I fell back on The Zaddy Method—letting the emotion run its course instead of negotiating with it.
A few minutes later she looked over and quietly announced,
“Eat eat.”
Attempt two.
Chicken?
Rejected.
Roti?
Rejected.
Then I opened the refrigerator, held up the Greek yogurt, and said,
“Yogurt.”
She smiled.
“Yogurt.”
Apparently that was the correct answer. A bowl of yogurt with blueberries disappeared without incident.
System recalibrated.
Bath time required a little improvisation. Her usual rinsing cup was still with my parents, so a measuring cup stepped in as the backup.
She didn’t seem to care.
The elephant towel was the real event.
“Ephay!”
She pulled the hood over her face and started another round of peekaboo—one of her signature moves lately.
After pajamas, hair brushing, and shoes, I told her we were heading to Mommy’s house.
“Mama’s house.”
She was ready.
I handed over the lunchbox and the extra clothes from daycare.
As she stepped through the doorway, I gave her one last prompt.
“Say bye bye, Papa.”
She turned around.
Smiled.
Waved.
“Bye bye, Papa!”
Then she disappeared inside the matrix.
Another clean handoff.
The routines change.
The houses change.
The relationship doesn’t.
📖 Book of the Day
Why it worked
Short enough for bedtime
Repetitive language
Great for early vocabulary
Encouraged active participation (”Hippo!”)
Nina Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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The stage that you are guessing what they want and getting extreme reactions that are mostly non-verbal is such a wonderfully hard stage! Hang in there, you got this!
This is so sweet! Love the “ephay.”
And my god what is “Fucker and Friends?” I don’t remember that show from when mine was little, lol.