don't bite your friends

sooo...i sing this song to stenni all the time. usually this ends with her saying "i'll bite..." and then listing the people that she'd like to bite. mostly mama. but she never actually does, she seems to know that we are just kidding. either way i thought that this message was getting across.


apparently, biting is not that problem i should be concerned with. at jazzercize today, she pinched two little boys today until she scratched them and drew blood. the babysitter said that it wasn't in a menacing way, she was just pinching their cheeks like old ladies do. so she asked me if we pinch her cheeks at home. we don't. but she's running up and pinching these kids so hard she draws blood by scratching. this is something completely out of left field, and i have no idea where she came up with it. it is obviously unacceptable.

so i had her apologize to the little boys. then when we got to the car i tried to explain to her that pinching is bad because it hurts. she thought it was hilarious. i tried everything i could think of, explaining why we don't pinch, getting angry, trying to reason with her, threatening time outs if it happens again (though this never actually happens. i'm not sure how to do a time out right. she LOVES her time out chair, which doesn't work out so well for me), and what was her response? she walked right up to me and pinched me in the tummy and said "i'll pinch baby!"

so we had a time out. and i clipped her nails, cuz it hurt. but i'm honestly kind of blindsided by this new pinching thing, and new to the world of toddler discipline. hubs says she's just "exuberant," but i think that she's kind of a bruiser from playing with papa and her older cousins so much, and don't know how to get her to be more gentle. this is a message we especially want to drive home before the new baby comes. any suggestions?

i am so not cut out for this new era of toddlerhood!