I am looking forward to this contest and I do have a

little something about my oldest son, Mark, when he

was about 1 and a half years of age.

We had been trying to teach him to say excuse me to

everyone so he wouldn't push past people like you see

a lot of youngsters do. We wanted our children to be

polite just as we were taught growing up. We worked

and worked at teaching our oldest to say, "Excuse me"

and we didn't seem to be getting anywhere until one

day it finally happened. Our son couldn't speak as

clear as I would have liked but my husband was at work

and I was at home. I had been in the kitchen cleaning

up and then I heard our son getting very angry about

something. I went in to see what was going on and

this is what I found.

Let me share the layout of our house as it was very

important at that time. Standing from the kitchen you

would see the couch on the left hand side of the room

right. In the left hand corner past the couch was the television. Right in front of the couch was a coffee table and this side of the couch on the left hand and right hand were two chairs. We also had another chair on the right hand side of the room past the couch.

Mark was standing at this edge of the coffee table

(edge closest to the kitchen) with his back to me. In

front of him were two big trucks, one of which was a

tonka and the other was just another big truck but not

quite as heavy duty as the first one.

I went over to the right hand side to see what was

going on as I was very interested in hearing what got

him so upset.

"Thcutha me. Thed thcutha me!" He was a very angry

little boy! I went over to him and said that trucks

don't move. "Go over thcutha me!" (His trucks were

all called go overs not trucks and that is a different

story! He never called them trucks until he was about

5-6 years of age.)

"You have to move trucks out of the way," I told him

and pushed one out of his way. He gave me the oddest

look and I wondered if he understood. Of course after

that I couldn't get him to say excuse me to people!

(lol) For many years he would push past people and I

had to scold him but maybe he thought exscuse me

didn't mean anything after all! (big grin)

There it is, my cute story of my oldest son. Hope you

enjoy it!

lots of love,

Violet

PS If this isn't quite what you are looking for just

let me know and I will try again! :-)