Daddy to the Rescue

What an interesting afternoon! Osten and I had our first official communication breakdown. It started with his outright refusal to participate in his swim class this afternoon, spilled into a disastrous dinner and overflowed into multiple simultaneous timeouts with more than one lost toy and LOTS of tears.

Enter Daddy abreast the white stallion of love and logic.

I gave him a quick recap of the afternoon's events as Osten alternated between wailing from his bedroom and trying to escape from his room. (I'm telling you, the kid was beside himself!) With my version of the afternoon's events in tow, Daddy bravely entered the lion's den for the other side of the story. In no less than five minutes, he emerged (unscathed) with a nice and neat explanation for Osten's antics. In a desperate attempt to explain the importance of learning to swim in hopes of coaxing him into the pool, I suggested this afternoon that once he learned to swim he would be able to go down the slide at our neighborhood pool this summer all by himself. I could tell that he was not inspired by this suggestion, but as it turns out, he is downright terrified at the thought of solo sliding (mostly because of his inability to resurface once in the pool and swim to the side unassisted, but I digress . . . ) Well, now that we know, we have promised Osten that we will accompany him on that silly slide forever. (Won't it be fun to remind him of this in the years to come!) I guess this means we're back to M&Ms and trips through the tree tunnel for inspiration. So much for creativity. But hats off to Daddy for digging the needle out of our complicated four-year-old little haystack and for saving a very distraught little boy from spending the remainder of the evening in his room! Very impressive. Once we got the slide scenario sorted out, Osten was back to his regular self, and we had a very nice night. Go, Daddy!