Repeating actions

Son tends to repeat things. He chooses to watch the same episodes of Bob The Builder over and over rather than new ones, he likes reading the same books again and again, doing the same puzzles and listening to the same song on the Cats album every time he gets in my car. When he asks for something from me, I can be sure he will ask again. So I have to ask myself A, “do I feel like doing this now?” and B, “will I mind doing this over and over again?” Like when he wants to wear one of my belts; Do I mind now? “not really”, will I mind him making a habit of it? Also, it won't put me out, nor anyone else. So, to avoid extreme desperate repetition, he goes to school wrapped in a belt. Same with when he wants another Dyna Jet, or when he wants me to build another Lego dairy (just so he can bash it down), or even when he wants to play horsey horsey on my back at 5:15. However, when he wants a bottle at 3am after insisting on having his “morning bottle” at 11, the answer is a flat out NO. Because he will want it again and again and I WILL mind. So I don’t let it happen once. As the poor family discovered when we holidayed at the Umhlanga house together. Sorry guys. He’s much less persistent when he goes for it these days and I still shudder to think of if others had to endure a battle of our wills.

As for Baby M, she has been repeating some actions herself. She rolls a lot. She smiles a lot. She has rice porridge for breakfast and every evening. She baths with her brother before her last feed of the day. She wakes for an unscheduled feed at around 9pm (gets it without any fuss from me). She wakes for a scheduled feed around 2am (I’m a little more fussed). At 4:30 she doesn’t like to settle and prefers to play awake, awake (I'd fuss if I had any energy at that time of day). But, by 7am, we're all smiling in the kitchen and then she sets off rolling, eating cereal, and smiling some more.