Toddler Peer Pressure

It's official, in the world of daycare (which we prefer to call school), my 16 mth old is a younger toddler. Yesterday was his first full day in the toddler classroom. Last week was his transition week where he visited for part of the day but always returned to the infant classroom.

He loves being a toddler! And we've already noticed some new behaviors, no doubt the result of toddler peer pressure - indirect of course - some good and some bad. He sits at a table and eats (no more highchair) and buses his own dishes, he sleeps on a cot (only 2 inches off the ground), and he washes his own hands - pumps the soap himself, rubs his hands together and then gets his own paper towel and dries them off. Wow, he's learning so much everyday. He also is a lot louder then he was before - which we've decided is because there's a lot more going on his classroom and toddlers are just louder than infants. He is also doing a lot more "limit testing" - a nice way of saying he knows that he's not supposed to do something but he looks at us, does it anyway, and then runs away laughing. The balance for me as a parent is that it's very cute, but I know I don't want to encourage that behavior, and he's also only 16mths so I need to cut him some slack because we're both still learning. No doubt there will be more to come on this.

Until then....