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Evelyn has had another first these past few days-you guessed it-being told no! For the most when she is doing something she is not supposed to, Bard and I use the phrase, "Not for baby." Because typically she is trying to grab something that she is not allowed to have (like my laptop) and we want her to learn not just no, but that some things are for her and some things are not for her! I also don't want to use no all the time for a couple of other reasons, one as a parent you quickly get extremely sick of this word! Two, you get even more sick of how quickly your child learns to say it back to you-and the more you say it the more they will! And three, I want to use it for when I'm really serious in the (partially vain) attempt to have it carry more weight than if I use it all the time.

The past few days have given me a very real reason to use the word no. As many of you know, we don't currently have a furnace due to the ever continuing project of finishing our basement, or what the Bible refers to as hell. Ha ha : ) So for 3-4 days we will be without heat while the furnace is moved to another part of the basement (I don't know why) and the duct work is all redone and put along the back wall (I don't know why.) We have two space heaters that we've been moving around and if we do it just right (minus blowing the circuit breaker four times so far) than the house stays in the low 60s, which is fine.

Now, I bought these two heaters just a short time ago and one thing I liked about them is that they declared they were "cool to touch." But I knew that Evelyn would definitely be testing that claim so I decided that I should try it out first. Liars! Cool to touch if you live in hell (the real one, not our basement) I was really irritated because now I knew I would have to keep a close eye on her because of course there is always a space heater in the room she is in. Nevermind the fact that she has a box of toys and a basket of books right in front of her, as soon as she was on the floor she crawled straight for the space heater (she was already late in crawling but she couldn't have held out two more weeks so we wouldn't be in this situation? What a rebelillious child!) I looked at her and loudly and firmly said, "No!" She stopped in her tracks and looked up at me. She started to crawl again and I repeated myself. She sat up, flapped her arms and said, "Aaaggghh!" And then turned and crawled the other way. Throughout the next few days this was repeated2 or 3 times, but each time she turned away after the first or second no and didn't go back and try again until much later (which, you may differ with me on but I believe that at this stage in her brain development it takes longer for her to form a habit than just several times so it would be too much to expect her to remember no upon just seeing the heater-it would have to be repeated several more times over probably a few more days before it became ingrained in her-disagree if you like : )) Since I wasn't seeing signs of the impish smile then followed by the action I was instructing her not to take, and since she turned away after being told no, I was congratulating myself on having an amzingly obedient child! For now anyway. Then I went into the kitchen for a minute and when I came out she was pulling the cord out of the wall and putting it in her mouth! I said, "NO!!!" And she dropped the cord, looked at me, and started to cry. Sigh.

We have a long life ahead of us.