Grayson: Mama, what’s going to happen if I throw this toy?

Me: Well, please don’t throw that toy.

G: What’s gonna happen if I throw it anyway?

M: I’ll have to take it away from you. But please just don’t throw it.

G: Well, what’s gonna happen if I do it again? Will I have a time out?

M: Yes, you’ll have to go to time-out in your room.

G: Mama, are you going to lock my door?

M: Grayson, I don’t want to lock your door OR put you in time out, but if you won’t stay in your room, then yes, I will lock your door for two minutes.

G: Mama, may I please take a stool in my room for my time out?

M (stumped): Why do you want a stool in your room?

G: Because I’m going to climb up on the stool and get the key for the door and unlock the door so you can’t lock me in my room for my time-out!

M: sigh…. Grayson, how about if you just don’t throw your toy to begin with?

Every night our routine is like this: Seth brushes his teeth, and then I read him 3 stories, and then we all do a “double slow dance” as he calls it, and then I tuck him into bed and we sing a song we call the Tractor Song (night night tractor, night night train, night Grayson, it’s time to go to bed.) Then, I ask Grayson, “Who gets the first hug and kiss?” and then Seth and I play-fight for the first one.

Tonight, instead of kissing me, he honked my nose. When I asked, “Where’s my hug and kiss?” he said, “I already gave you yours, Mama.” I asked, “When did you give me a kiss?” and he said, very casually, “Several years ago.”

****

This weekend we had a great visit from some far-away relatives. It was so nice to see Aunt Shirley & Uncle Jim, and Great-Grandpa Erwin and Grandma Eileen. Grayson was particularly fond of Jim & Shirley’s dog, Mabel, and was very good with her.

On Friday, Eileen offered to take Grayson into town to buy him something special. When they asked him what he wanted to get, he said he wanted to get a “flower for Mama”. Such a sweet boy. Unfortunately, he misbehaved at the store and they did not end up getting anything.

Speaking of misbehaving… Lately it has sometimes seemed that each day is an uphill battle with him. We were a little late in realizing how much we needed to really set limits with him, so now we are really in the midst of establishing limits, boundaries, and making him aware that there are indeed consequences for his actions. Consequently, at times I feel like I am just constantly taking things AWAY from him, rather than rewarding him or having fun. It’s such a tough balancing act… I really feel for other parents going through the same thing, and for HIM really, because this is obviously a hard thing for him, and all of us. I think he is a very bright child, and he seems wired to really push limits and boundaries, and very stubborn. It’s hard for me to talk about, but I think that, while from the outside it may seem that he is hyperactive or has ADD, believe it or not things are slowly improving. I sure hope so. He is a lucky boy to have so many people who love him.

First, a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Nana Louie! We wish you could be here with us to celebrate your birthday!

We are thoroughly enjoying the late spring weather, and have spent much time outdoors with Grayson. He helped me plant some bulbs and some veggies for the garden (sort of!) and mostly he just enjoys running around in the fresh air. Grayson is such an active boy - his energy seems to know no bounds. He loves to run and jump, and sometimes we get tired just watching him!

He still loves his trains, trucks, and tractors, though not quite with the same fervor as when he was younger. His list of obsessions has added:

• Drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch or Magnadoodle. He could do this for hours!
• Reading/Listening to “scary stories” or movies. I don’t know how many variations of the “Ivory Soap Floats!” story I have told him.
• Sleepovers at Grandma’s house!

So, some stories I’ve saved in my email over the past few months:

Belly Button
I’ve probably mentioned here before that Grayson fiddles with his belly button when he’s tired or insecure. Much like how other children cuddle a security blanket, but his is always attached! He really pulls it out far sometimes, and twists it and basically twiddles it a lot. He was at Grandma’s house for a sleepover and started to twiddle. She asked if she could play with his button. He said, “Sure, just a minute, I’ll get it ready for you.” He proceeded to pull it out so she could grab it.

Observant Grayson
I was waiting for Grayson to pick out some stories to read, and he was dawdling and I was tired, so I did let out a (very small) sigh. He looked up at me and said, “What did you go ‘huh‘ for?” (he made this big grunt to imitate what I did)

I said, “I didn’t say anything, I was just breathing.”

He didn’t buy it. He knew something was up. He kept asking “why did you go ‘huh’ Mama?”

Manners!
I gave him a kiss as we were getting ready for bed. He said very sweetly, “Thank you, Mama.” I just sort of did an “awww” and then he said “Thank you” again, and then he finally pulled my face toward his and said, “Say ‘You’re Welcome’, Mama!”

The Moon
Tonight’s nice moon is just a little sliver and as we were driving home he said excitedly, “Look, the moon looks like a fingernail, there’s a fingernail in the sky!”

I Need My Saw!
We were just leaving Grandma’s house and got him strapped into the carseat when he started freaking about forgetting his (plastic) saw at her house. I calmed him, then said quietly to Seth, “Can you please go get his S-A-W?” Grayson said, “Yeah Daddy, please go get my S-A-W!”

Boo-Boo
He said, “Look! I’ve got a little boo-boo on my finger. It’s so teeny tiny. You can’t see it with those 2 eyes you got there.”

I said, “Are you going to play with Brooklyn today?”

G: “Umm…. well, I think I am but I don’t know, am I, Mama?”

Me: “Well, that’s up to you. Do you like to play with her?”

G: “Sometimes I do… and sometimes I don’t. It’s just complicated.”

Me: Gulp. How old are you again, kid?

=-=-=-=-=

Somehow a few weeks ago, Grayson started asking for a bowl “to throw up in”. At first we thought he was serious, and then we just did it to humor him. So he started carrying a bowl with him to bed every night. Last night before bedtime, he insisted on both a bowl to throw up in, and a tissue to spit on. He has a designated “spitting” tissue and will just walk around spitting into it randomly.

I’m hoping this is a short-lived phase.

More speech examples:

• “Mama, this store has band-aids! We have band-aids at home also.” (the way he says the word “also” is super-cute. The fact that he says it is even cuter.
• Petulantly: “I’m not going to like that.”  (said about many things)
• If he says something like “my knee is hurt”, and I ask why, he always answers, “Because it is hurt!”

Despite the fact that he is often capable of speaking in long, complex sentences, we’re also hearing an awful lot of screeching and baby-babble lately. It’s frustrating, mostly because we know what he IS capable of, but we try to be relaxed about it most of the time. (I find myself doing a lot of “I am a hollow reed” breathing)

He seems to know much of the alphabet, but, just as he did with his colors way back when, he likes to trick us into thinking he doesn’t know them. Thanks to a TV show called Super Why, he also seems to know a lot of the letter sounds - sometimes if we see a letter ‘S’, and I ask him what it is, he’ll do the ’sssss ssss’ sound before saying the letter. Gotta love PBS.

Toilet learning (yes, it’s now Evil and Wrong to say “potty training”) is going very well — at the sitter’s house. She is thrilled with how quickly he has taken to it, and he basically has no accidents there, except occasionally during naptime. Here at home, it’s more of a bust. Obviously a control issue, but if it comes down to forcing him to sit on the toilet, my feeling is that we should not make it into a huge negative ordeal. So, again, we’re being “hollow reeds” and hoping that he will become so comfortable with toileting at the sitter’s house that it will more naturally carry over here.

Oh, this happened; last weekend while he was in his bedroom for his nap, he removed his diaper and pants, and pooped on the floor. Yeah, I was very glad that Seth was on duty (heh) at the time. Grayson was laughing and very entertained while Seth was cleaning up the mess, and apparently Seth said sternly, a couple of times, “This isn’t funny.”

Next day, Grayson was spending some quality time with Papa, where another poop related accident occurred (this was a diaper malfunction). While Papa was trying to get the mess under control, Grayson kept cackling and saying, “This isn’t funny! This isn’t funny, Papa!”

Okay, some pictures. We’ve been a little slow on that front lately. Mama just put up a new exhibit at the museum, which always takes a lot of time away from family.

The food baby in full effect:

Quick side note about meatballs:

Grandma Becky took him to church with her on Sunday. Prior to church, he ate TWO bowls of oatmeal, and was still complaining of being hungry. He had a snack at both sunday school and in the nursery. After church, there was a pot luck. Apparently he ate so much that at one point, a friend of Becky’s, watching Grayson, said, “Becky, is he…. going to get sick from all this food?”

The biggest hit of the buffet? Meatballs. I suppose he’s probably never had them before, as Becky’s vegetarian and I rarely make things like that. Becky says they went back for more meatballs… wait for it… six times. The final trip, his face fell when he saw the meatballs were all gone. “Who ate all the meatballs??” he asked, chagrined. Then, as he realized, he said, “Oh… I did.”

He’s still slender — no worries about his weight at all — but lately he eats so much that after a meal his stomach is round and hard, looking almost pregnant. We call it his “food baby”. He’ll now pull up his shirt after a big meal and announce that he looks just like Daddy, or Papa. Hours later, his stomach will be back to its perfectly flat, almost muscular state. It’s pretty amazing. I guess that’s what you get when you have the metabolism of a 3 year old, and spend approximately 14 hours a day running around!

More to say, but duty calls.

Will post pics of him playing with some of his new “stuff” later.

After work, we drove around a little to look at Christmas lights. Some of the houses between his sitter’s house and home are just crazy. I don’t remember houses getting all decked out like that, with inflatable backlit Santa teeter totters and penguins etc, when I was a kid. He really enjoyed looking at them, and I gave him the “job” of telling me every time he saw some Christmas lights.

He does this thing sometimes, which I’d like to try to record, because I just can’t quite get it across correctly in my voice. It’s like a recitation: “When the timer goes off, I will go to brush my teeth.” or “When the train comes and scares me, you will come to my room.” So in the car tonight, he started the sentence: “When Christmas comes, Santa’s going to bring us…” he trailed off, repeated, trailed off a few times. I looked back and his face was just intense with concentration. I asked if he was okay, and he looked sort of amused as he said, “I just don’t remember this word!” I said, “Are you looking for the word ‘presents’?” He said, “I was! That was the word. I forgot it.”

Just this simple exchange is amazing and blissful and hilarious to me all at once. I really treasure our conversations, and absolutely love that we can talk like this. He is so much fun to talk to.

But then, he got all sassy on me:

Okay, he’s not really flipping me off. I told him to look “dark and moody” for the camera, and told him to mimic what I was doing. Wish I’d had some video of this. His expressions were hilarious.

Tonight he fervently wanted the camera. After giving him a brief lesson in what NOT to do, I let him have at it. The results are actually pretty stunning: I think he takes pictures as well as I do, not that that’s saying much - but I am quite a bit more experienced than he is.

Here are a few he took. Click the thumbnails to see bigger ones or go to the set.

Last but NOT least, is a video we took tonight. He specifically requested a movie this time. Yes, he really loves being in front of and behind a camera.

Decorating the Toolbench

As Grayson’s mama, I found this hysterical. He’s telling me that he decorated his tool bench. Each snowman represents mama, daddy, and Grayson. Then he starts singing “Oh Baby Oh Baby Oh” (never heard this from him before). When I asked him who had said it, he replied, “From you.” Oh boy, I am in so far over my head with this kid!

Today, Grayson was with Grandma Becky. He spent a lot of today going around to random people and saying, “I’m going to protect you!” He’s asking us to call himGrayson-Batman. At one point he went up to Papa Rick and hugged his leg, then said, “I’m protecting your leg, Papa!”

Grayson got a really funny look and said, “Mama, tractors don’t have bottoms!”

I explained it wasn’t a bottom like OUR bottoms, but demonstrated like this: “See, this is the top of this book, and here’s the bottom of the book. Here’s the top of your door, and the bottom of your door.”

His face lit up, then he stuck his hand down the back of his pants and, patting his bottom, said, “And this is the bottom of MY bottom!”

This kid…. Oh boy.