21 months old: first time out

I need to start by saying that Olivia is officially 21 months old as of 11/7! I missed taking pictures last weekend, even. Along those lines, I can sort of tell that she's inching closer to being 2 years old these days. Case in point:

She had her very first (and surely not even close to the last) time out on Monday. I gave her a bowl of mac and cheese with a few peas mixed in -- this girl has GOT to learn to eat veggies! -- and after a few bites, she promptly started throwing her food everywhere: against the garage door, into her play area in the dining room, and even managed to get some from the dining room into the kitchen. I asked her to stop, I counted to three ... and she kept doing it. And laughing. And then smacked my hands away when I tried to remove the bowl of offending food. Yeah, Mommy don't play that.

I told her she was going to have a time out because we don't throw our food and it's bad manners. I turned her booster chair facing the door, set the microwave timer for a minute, and waited.

There was an acknowledgement of the wrongdoing: "Noooooooo throwing food. Noooooo."

Then the anger phase set in: "DOWN NOW! DOWN! NOW!" she screamed in a voice that sounded straight out of a scene from The Exorcist.

And finally, our first spousal disagreement about discipline. He thought I was being too hard on her and that she didn't know why she was in time out. I told him 1 minute in a chair wasn't going to kill her, and besides, maybe it was ME who needed a time out.