Boy Update

The latest on my greatest...

Often heard:
"Oh, you're right."

"I doing a good job." --This is usually to solicit praise after a he's finally begun to behave after driving me crazy for a while.

"I made you a special present!"

"Now you so proud of me!"

"First we walk, walk, walk. Then we go see the pirate ship. Then we walk, walk, walk. Then we see the lions." --We're prepping for a trip to Vegas, and he likes to show me the map of the strip.

"Where are we going?" (clap, clap, clap) "To find Daddy!" (clap, clap, clap)
("To find Daddy" can be substituted with "to shop at the store" or anywhere else we're going. You may need to catch a few episodes of Dora the Explorer to get the proper rhythym for this one.)

Songs:
Bad Day
This Little Light of Mine
Isn't He Wonderful
The B-I-B-L-E
Inright, Outright
Zacheus (how is that spelled?)
You Are Holy
Come, Now is the Time to Worship
Wake Me Up When September Ends

I'm not sure, but I think he initially heard that last one from his Daddy's MP3 player, and he only knows the one line that he repeats and repeats. As for the "Bad Day" song, I think he got it off of American Idol and now they play it so much in stores, etc he always listens for it. He sings the title line over and over and hums.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, since he sings a LOT. He also continuously sings radio and some TV commercials, as well as any theme songs from his favorite shows.

Learning curve:
He knows all his ABCs, what they look like, and what sounds they make. We've made a lot of progress spelling and reading, too, but he's not doing either yet on his own. He can spell things like "hat" or "bed" with some prompting.
He knows all his numbers to 20 but so far can only identify them up to 11.
He knows all his letter signs to "J." This one would progress quicker if his mother could remember "K" but I keep forgetting it so it's hard to teach it!

Recent story:

He's been really good at bedtime recently, but then finals week for Mommy hit and everything went sour. So this week has been rough, and on one night in particular I was really running out of patience. I was not happy with him. He kept insisting he was too scared to sleep alone. In such situations I usually point out that Jesus is watching over him, and his friends Mr. Cow, the sheep, Mickey, Stitch, etc are there with him. On this particular night I was really frustrated so I grabbed all the friends, pointed them out, stuffed them (and him) under the blanket, and snapped at him to go to sleep.

As I was leaving his room I heard him plaintively ask, "Is Jesus here too?" Whoa, mild guilt trip. So I turned around, kissed him on the forehead, and told him that Jesus was definitely there too. Then I started out again, to be stopped by him saying, "Oh, I'm sorry." I asked why he was sorry. He said, "I forgot about Jesus."

Make that a major guilt trip. I went back over, flipped on the lights and we added another prayer. We thanked Jesus for watching over him and said we were sorry that we forgot about him. Then we asked for help for him to go to bed and help for Mommy to be patient.

I've come to believe that trying to raise a Godly child really keeps you on the straight and narrow. There is little to no room for mistakes, because they are always watching, listening, and asking why you do things. S0 unless I'm going to be a big hypocrite, I have to fix things, confess them (to God, not the child), then apologize to the child and point out that what Mommy was doing was wrong and I would try not to do it anymore.

He's totally worth any amount of work involved, so making sure I'm always behaving is nothing. I just don't want to be leading him astray. What a responsibility we have as parents! And I thought it was hard to be responsible for feeding them, etc!