I have no words

Last night, Biscuit asked if he could watch a TV show in my bedroom, and I said yes. In the meantime, I was in the living room watching a show, chatting with my best childhood friend online and building one heckuva fire station out of the building logs Biscuit got for Christmas.

I was quite proud of my creation, and I just knew Biscuit would be very excited.

I called to him and said, "Come look. I built a surprise for you."

Biscuit said he didn't want to come, so I didn't say anything else to him. Finally, he came shuffling into the living room. He looked down at my fire station, walked over to it. And I was sure he was going to grab his fire trucks and start playing.

But do you know what he did?

He started crying, picked his foot up and kicked down my fire station.

HE KICKED IT DOWN!

My fire station was a pile of rubble. It looked like a tornado had ripped through it.

"Why did you do that?" I asked Biscuit.

"I didn't want to build a fire station right now," he said.

"I built that as a surprise for you," I said. "Kicking it down was not a nice thing to do."

Biscuit walked toward me and tried to crawl up on my lap. But as hard as it was, I put my hand up, shook my head and told him no.

Biscuit was full-on wailing at this point. "I-I-I-I'm very b-b-b-busy, Mom. I don't want to build a fire station right now."

"I didn't ask you to build a fire station," I said. "I built that as a surprise for you. I built it so you could play with it, not knock it down. Knocking down something I built is not a nice thing to do, and it really hurt my feelings."

He tried to crawl up on my lap again, and again, as hard as it was, I held up my hand, shook my head and said no.

The back-and-forth conversation carried on for a while longer with him making excuses for why he knocked it down, and me, basically shooting down every one of his excuses, trying to explain to him that it was flat-out not a nice thing to do. I just kept trying to say the same thing over and over, hoping it would register with him.

I never told him to apologize. I wanted to see if he could put the pieces together and realize on his own that saying he was sorry was what he should do.

The apology eventually came, and the wailing came to an end.

Finally, I let him crawl up on my lap. He laid his head down on my shoulder, and that tired baby was asleep in about 3 minutes. He just cried himself out.

It's hard to see Biscuit so upset, but he has to realize there are consequences to his actions. He has to be held accountable, especially when it involves doing something unkind to another person.

Let's hope the morning is better.

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Update: This morning was better. Biscuit was standing on the counter in our bathroom as Jeff was getting him ready for daycare.

Out of nowhere, Biscuit said, "Dad, when you break something that belongs to someone else, that's not a nice thing to do."

I looked at Jeff with my eyebrows raised. "Biscuit, are you the pot or the kettle?" Which of course cracked up Jeff and me.

Hey, we have to get our amusements somewhere!