???

What do you do with a kid that can think outside the box?

Thursday, I decided to paint my toenails (a rare occurrence, but I was feeling kind of cute so I took a few moments). I sat on the bathroom floor and Rainer watched me. I didn't paint my fingernails because I use my hand too much and the fingernail polish only lasts about a day on my fingers because of that. So, when I was done with my toenails, Rainer wanted to know what I didn't paint my fingernails. All I told him was that I didn't want to. I then got started on my day. Sometimes Rainer will follow me around and help me do whatever I am doing, but sometimes he'll go off and play outside or in the toy room or with his toys in the family room or do countless other things--so it is not unusual for there to be periods of silence with him. But while I was working Thursday, I felt like I should go check on him. When I got to where he was, he immediately hid his hands, so I knew something was up. I asked him what he was doing and he said, "Nothing." Then I really knew something was wrong. I looked at his hands and feet and saw that he had painted them with the same fingernail polish I had used that morning.

For a three year old he didn't do a bad job

and luckily he had enough sense to do it in the bathroom so that if he spilled I could have at least cleaned it up (but he actually didn't make any kind of mess). I didn't yell or get mad (I actually couldn't stop laughing)...he felt bad enough because he knew he had done something wrong. But I did tell him to ask me the next time he wanted his nails painted so that I could help him.

So, Friday morning, he came to me and asked if I would paint his nails. We went into the bathroom and he sat up on the sink. I used a cotton ball and some fingernail polish remover to take the polish off his fingernails and clean up the skin around his toenails. I then repainted his fingernails. We had breakfast and played a few games and then I laid down to take a little rest. I was feeling kind of slow and lethargic so I knew that a 30 min cat nap would do the trick. Rainer was off in the toy room playing so I laid down on the family room couch so I could keep one ear listening for him. I woke up to him running past me and smelling like fingernail polish remover--never a good sign. So I went to investigate to see what he had done. On his leg I found blue marker and what looked like his attempt to clean it up. I found a CD colored over with a blue sharpie. In my bathroom I found a half empty bottle of fingernail polish remover, blue cotton balls, and a wad of toilet paper on the ground. Can you deduce what happened with these clues? He had colored the CD with a blue sharpie while it was on his leg. So in an effort to get rid of the incriminating evidence, he tried to clean his leg off. He had seen the power the fingernail polish remover had on the nail polish--it had even gotten the nail polish off of his skin. So, using deductive reasoning, he figured the nail polish remover would do the same for the marker on his leg. He was right--it did remove it, but it also smeared it around. (Using my child's same reasoning, I then cleaned the CD in the same way--so hopefully acetone doesn't hurt CDs.)

So, what do you do with a child that can look at a problem and figure out a solution based on other experiences he's had? =)