Keeping Juan Valdez in business

You know how kids do what their parents do? Like, if you sit around on your ass and watch tv all day, your kid will grow up sitting on his or her ass watching tv all day? Because you're teaching them how to do Life, and the life they're learning is ass-sitting and tv-watching. And probably several bags of Doritos thrown in there for good measure. Anyway, that's one of the reasons I keep my tv OFF during the day at home with my son (the other reason is that there is NOTHING on worth watching). It's not always a bad thing - kids learn the good and the neutral things you do as well. (Example: I grew up hundred of miles from my grandparents. Thus, growing up very far away from one's grandparents is a very normal concept for me. My husband, on the other hand, grew up a few blocks from his grandparents. Our son growing up hundreds or thousands of miles from his grandparents, as he currently is, is kind of weird for my husband. Get what I'm saying? However you grew up is what is normal to you. I'm not saying you can't wrap your mind around other ideas because obviously we do that all the time, and sometimes we do the exact opposite of how we learned from our parents. This too can be good or bad.)

So anyway, this basic principle (monkey see, monkey do) has me thinking about all kinds of things that I do that the monkey sees. This morning, it was my coffee. I drink a lot of coffee (my mother drinks a lot of coffee, my aunt drinks a lot of coffee, my grandmother drinks a lot of coffee, my cousins... you get the idea), and guess-who has noticed. Well, he hasn't noticed that it's coffee in there because he's never had coffee, but he knows that I'm always carrying around or reheating a mug of something, and so like everything else I have, he wants that something.

This morning he was squealing and reaching for my mug, so I quickly gulped down what was left and gave it to him. He entertained himself for almost an hour, picking up the mug, putting it down, bringing it to his mouth, putting it down, picking up his sippy cup and placing that inside the mug. Listening to his own babbles echo inside the mug as he held it to his mouth and laughing more at how silly it sounded. It was adorable.

Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, let me repeat that the mug was empty. I am not giving my 14-month-old child any more coffee than the small amount that was clinging to the sides of the cup, which was not even enough to cause a drip out of the mug as he turned it upside down and waved it around.

So my son is learning to drink coffee or that coffee drinking is what adults do or something. I have no idea how he's processing this information at this point. When he finally gets over how excruciatingly disgusting coffee is (somewhere in the teenage years), he'll start drinking coffee too. The coffee growers of the world should be thanking me for ensuring their continued business.