Ju independence story number one:

About a week ago, I was chatting with my mom at Ju's request on the webcam. He enjoys seeing himself on camera and likes to show "gamma" things in the general vicinity, like toy cars, beads and sippy cups. For some reason (which we can speculate was that he wanted my undivided attention) he decided to take a whole mouth full of water and spit it onto the laptop.

Having a friend who is now on laptop # 3 due to similar accidents (that she was at fault for, having no kids to blame it on, although she has cats), I was quite concerned that this might completely fry my laptop and put Ju in time out on the couch while I tried to dry between the keys with a paper towel. By some stroke of luck, I did not have it actually plugged into the wall at the time, so there seemed to be no immediate danger. Ju began to cry sitting on the couch because he knew I was upset with him. I was mean while trying to talk to my mom about how best to deal with the problem but I could not hear what she was say and was afraid to type on the wet keyboard, lest I force some of the water through into the circuitry. I told Ju if he was going to cry, he would have to do it in his room upstairs, and took him up there and set him on the bed to continue his time out.

Back downstairs, I found I could pry some of the keys off and started drying up the water that remained. Ju continued to cry for another 10 minutes or so. After he had calmed himself, he came to the top of the stairs and called down "Mommy, I'm not crying anymore. I'm all done" and came back down. Still feeling angry at him, I ignored him and continued cleaning the computer. After a while he started asking me to put on Bob the Builder and when I told him that he was still in time out until I was finished drying the computer, he started to cry again. I ignored his crying and next thing I knew, he had gone back up to his room to finish his crying again, and then reappeared when he was finished. I didn't have to tell him anything.

The laptop survived okay, it seems, at least (knock on wood) there was no damage.


Second Ju independence story:

Weekends are for the family, parent's quality time being after Ju goes to bed. Late one night, as we were discussing our plans for the evening with Ju playing quietly in the living room, my husband mentioned he wanted to watch "the penguin movie" in reference to "March of the Penguins" which he hadn't seen. Ju has his own "penguin movie" ("Happy Feet") which he enjoys watching from time to time.

Unobserved by us in the kitchen, Ju proceeded to get his DVD case out, take out his Happy Feet DVD and jam it into the VCR. I think when nothing happened, he realized his error and started trying to get it back out. This resulted in both the DVD and his finger getting stuck inside and by the time I was able to get both out, he was quite freaked out and the DVD had a long scratch that now prevents you from watching beyond the first 40 minutes of the movie.

I have had this conversation with my husband before - that I would prefer Ju to know how to use things like the DVD player and the stereo to that if he decides to try to do things himself, he won't hurt himself. This argument was lost when he broke the last DVD player we had and almost got two tapes stuck in the VCR at the same time, so when we got a new DVD player, I never bothered to show him how to use it, not wanting to be blamed if he broke it. Now, at least, I think I have proved my point that he should be taught how to do things like this, if for nothing else than to prevent fingers from getting stuck in places they should not be. After he got over his fear of being stuck and fear of being reprimanded for "breaking" his DVD, I showed him which buttons to push. As of today, he's still afraid to do it on his own, but he is happy watching March of the Penguins instead of Happy Feet. He says he likes the music.