Sigh

It's official - my Little Guy is no longer a baby, he's a toddler. He's turning into a little boy... this makes me a little sad to lose the baby and a lot excited for what's to come.

Something I'm NOT excited about at the moment though is that my Little Guy has turned into a little boy who hits his mommy! I'm not sure exactly when this happened, but my Little Guy has decided that hitting (and biting sometimes) is an effective method of showing his frustration. I've tried several ways to discourage this including: giving a swat on his cloth-diapered rear, sternly talking to him, ignoring the situation and even a couple times slapping his hand (even though I'm pretty convinced hitting back is not going to be very effective). Usually he just hits again or laughs at me - the latter of which really gets me into a boil.

I know other parents have this problem - if your toddler went through a hitting phase what did you try? My son has a very high pain tolerance, so nothing physical phases him at all. (Not that I've been beating on him... I've just noticed that when he falls or bangs into something he basically ignores it and moves on or when one of the dogs retaliates). He doesn't really understand reasoning with him yet (I've tried) or the traditional time-out.

My current idea that I haven't tried out yet, because I just came up with it today, is to put him in his crib for a couple minutes every time he hits (or bites). This is a little inconvenient since usually we're playing downstairs and his crib is upstairs, but I'll do it if it gets the point across to him. I'm picturing myself making 50 trips upstairs ... mmmm....

I'm sure you can't picture this cute little guy ever doing anything wrong, huh? =) He's like a Dennis the Menace - cute, but into trouble!