Tobey: Terrible two's?

Tobey must have "turned two" over the weekend because he has really started to test our authority...still in his quiet way.

The point of challenge seems to be diaper and clothes changes. I don't know if he just doesn't enjoy it (it's not like he's crying through them) or if it's the few dependable points in the day where he can try to gain control of the situation with his quiet dawdling. But getting him up on the bed to change has been a bear and we're trying to figure out how to address it.

It's hard to institute the naughty corner for dawdling because, although he is blatantly not listening to us, his offense is a little more subtle having not done anything overtly wrong, just not having done anything right yet. We tried counting to 10 once and it kind of worked although I still wonder about his comprehension of 1-10. Plus, after we counted to 10, Tom said he couldn't believe he just caught himself counting to 10 to get a kid to do something. Tom's also been reading the "Love & Logic" book and they encourage immediate logical consequences to disobedience. Like, "You can keep the toys that you pick up." vs. the incessant, "Pick up your toys, NOW." So our version of that at bedtime was that if Tobey doesn't get up on the bed to change his diaper, he goes straight to bed without his milk or bedtime Bible, which he likes. There were two nights we put him to bed in his crib with clothes on: the first night, we let him back out in a few minutes, the second night, he slept the whole night in his day clothes.

In the past couple of days, he's been better. Still dawdling at times (he wouldn't let my mom change his gosh-awful smelling diaper the other day) but at least nighttime changing hasn't been a problem. I don't know if it's because I've been doing some of it now (maybe he was dawdling and protesting because I've been having to spend so much time with Eli?) or if he learned his lesson from the other night. And poor kid, having a new baby around must be such a big change that I can't fully comprehend, even though Tobey's been so affectionate with Eli. Either way, it's clear from his behavior that Tobey is turning two in just a couple of weeks.