Ow!

"Ow!" is Seth's first reaction now to anything scary, loud or painful...and occasionally the things he thinks he might get in trouble for. This morning he managed to scare himself with a loud noise by pulling a stack of bowls off the counter and smashing two of them. It's the first time he has broken and dishes and he ran to the next room to hide saying, "ow!" After finding him and calming him down, I put him in his chair and made sure that he didn't have any glass on him and then turned to cleaning up. I had to fight the cat for the right to clean the floor, but I managed.

After it was clean I sat down and talked to Seth about it and explained that it was okay for him to have made the mistake, he had never tried to pull down dishes before and all we give him is plastic so he didn't know that they would break. I talked to him about being careful and how the glass could hurt him because it was sharp. Of course I knew to him what he got from the situation is that it scared him so he probably won't do it again for a few days. The funny part was how my reaction was different from Daddy's. I was focused on how he could have been hurt and making sure he was safe. When I told Daddy about it, after I reassured him that no one got hurt, he asked how many broke and then answered with, "well now we don't have to wash those." Every broken dish has a silver lining!