There’s something about teaching kids bad habits that is incredibly funny. I realize that every time I mention doing such things, all the moms reading this cringe, but I can’t help it.

Anyway, a couple weeks back I found myself engaged in my rather dubious pastime. This time I was teaching N how to poke J. She’s not quite the morning person that I am. N and I had been up for a while, and it seemed like it was getting time to wake her up.

So it was that I was holding N next to J and gently poking her in the belly. I looked at N, straightened out my pointer finger while keeping the rest of my fingers curled over and poked.

J, of course, was waking up during this – rather grumpily I might add. But N was figuring it out. He was staring at me with his strangely serious expression, watching what I was doing. It’s worth noting here that N really has an unusual ability to focus on things. He gets very quiet and very intent, and he just sort of figures things out.

This time things didn’t go quite so well for him. It started well, though. He looked down at his hand, straightened out his index finger and curled up the rest of his hand. It was perfect poking form.

He held his hand up, staring at it. He looked at my smiling and encouraging face. He looked at J’s bleary-eyed grumpy face. He looked back at his finger…

And poked himself in the eye.

For all those new dads out there, be aware that there are certain things which your child’s mom won’t like waking up to. One of them is watching you teach her youngest son to poke himself in the eye.