He's a boy...

Still no camera...I don't know how much longer I can take this! At least scrapbooking won't be very hard for the months of march-June! (not that one page a month is hard anyways, but at least I won't have to narrow the pictures down so much).

I remember listening to another young mom complain about the terrible twos a year or two ago to a mom with older kids. The older mom said "well, the twos never seemed so bad, I thought 3 1/2 was a real low point." I'm maybe starting to sense that. I feel like our life is bipolar. One minute we're out painting homemade lego guys or reading stories or going to the park, the next hour we're both laying on the floor throwing tantrums. What's a girl and boy to do? The goods are blissful and the bads are terrible...that's how life seems these days. He's never been so much fun and he's never been more difficult to parent...anyone else out there feel that way sometimes?

With all the turmoil I've started attempting a few new parenting schemes (I don't feel like "technique" is the appropriate word since all I'm really trying to do is get him to do what I want, it really is a scheme). I'm not sure where I read or heard these ideas so if you're the one who gave them to me you can give yourself full credit. Anywho they seem to work okay and I thought I'd share the ideas. (If you don't care about the ideas you should skip to the funnies at the bottom).

Energy Drain

I'm about 95% sure this idea came from the Love and Logic book. I'm not sold on this one yet since it doesn't always work. Here's the idea:

Imagine that your child is whining for you to do something while you're in the middle of something else (this is probably really hard for you to imagine so I will include a picture to help spark your memory).

For example, you're making dinner and your child keeps whining and driving you crazy to play with them or get a new toy out or help them button up their coat (it's june, why do they need a coat anyway!?!). Well, you just have an energy drain which means you collapse to the floor and sort of ignore them. They probably keep whining and maybe more and you say in a quiet voice "oh no, I had an energy drain, the only way I can get my energy back is if _________" (Fill in with anything like the living room looks clean OR the crayons are back in their box OR you pick 10 rocks and put them in the rock bucket OR whatever). Teagan keeps whining for about 15 seconds but when he sees that I'm ignoring the whine (with my eyes closed) he just goes and does whatever I said.

Now if he even starts to whine he will stop himself and say "I'm not whining mom, I was just kidding." And if he whines and I forget he says, "mom, why didn't you fall on the floor when I was whining?" and my favorite was when he said "Mom, I'm hoping that you start whining so that I can have an energy drain and make you clean up all my toys." HAHAH!!!! I love it! I'll have to watch myself.

I'm still learning when it's good to use this one I've had a few failures, like I said I'm not sold yet, but I think that it is much more effective than screaming "STOP WHINING" at the top of my lungs because that never works.

MoNStEr BAG

This one is my favorite for sure! I can not think of the source though. Take a garbage bag and draw mean eyes and a scary mouth(on the opening) and tell your kid about how he loves to eat toys and lives in the top of the closet. (I want this one!!!)

When the toys and junk are EVERYWHERE knock on the door and start growling and exclaim "OH NO! the monster is hungry!!!! Hurry, get the toys!" I gave him about 5-10 minutes and then went and got the bag. You growl and run all through the house and throw all the toys, shoes, clothes, whatever into it and then put it back in the top of the closet. I think I'll have him puke up the toys once a week or something and give Teagan the chance to get toys back (if he doesn't clean them up I might take them to DI or put them away for 6 months or something).

I have never seen Teagan clean up so fast in my life, it was the most beautiful thing! No nagging, no threats, no timeouts, and I'm not the bad guy! He was giggling like crazy and we both had fun and the house was clean. Wow. It was a good one, I plan to use it often!

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Okay, now for the funny Teagan stories:

Yesterday we had a little girl names Addison over who is also 3 1/2. Teagan doesn't generally act too terribly strange to get attention from other kids (adults, yes) but for some reason he was bound and determined to make this girl laugh. He was trying everything in the book to make her laugh and she wouldn't budge, all his best moves and craziest faces were failing over and over. It culminated in Teagan repeatedly throwing blankets at his face and falling on his face on the ground, groaning in pain and making a lot of "crazy" sound effects. He looked up at addison

and said:

T: "Hey Addison, did you think that was funny?"

A: Shakes her head

T: really?!? (truly bewildered)

He asked several times if she thought what he was doing was funny and she always said no, finally he relented and just played with her. I had to leave the room several times because I was laughing so hard, Addison just doesn't get the humor. ;)

Teag really loves to have me tell him stories. I honestly am running out of steam, I need some new material. Anywho, I had the sudden stroke of genius to have him tell me stories while I w

rote them in a notebook to read back to him later. (I hear this is a great way to get kids interested in reading/writing so it was a doubly fantastic). He is extremely proud of them and tries to add more each time we read them, it's pretty cute. Here they are if you want, your three year old boys might find them more entertaining then you though.

FYI: these are as close to his exact words as I could get, this was all him!

STORY 1

One day, when somebody was driving in a moving truck, he was opening the door and fell off into the road and cars ran over him. It was a little boy, I don't know his name, but Coney was driving the car and

Beety was sitting in the back. Then Beety fell out of the car. They were moving to a new house. Then there were monsters on the car and they were mean, but one monster tried to give them a kiss but Coney and Beety started punching the monsters in the face until they fell on the road and got hit by cars.

Story 2

We were moving to Grandma and Grandpa's house and on the way we found a huge, huge, huge Iron man that would talk all by itself. Then there were a lot of Iron Mans, but they were not mean. Then bad guys came like Blue moon and Quartz was nice. Blue moon tried to fight all the Iron Mans, but Iron man took out his sword and cut off blue moon's arm and his other arm and they fell onto the ground. Then he cut off his neck so blue moon couldn't talk anymore. Then seven Iron Mans came to help. Goodbye, The End. (I asked him what the end of the story was and he said "oh it's 'goodbye, the end'"

Story 3

One day there were a lot of Iron mans, 5. Then the monsters came to kiss IronMan so Ironman punched the monsters in the legs then it fell to the ground and broke his arm.

Story 4

All of the Iron Mans were flying airplanes. One day they were going to the dragon's house. Then Batman pulled up next to the Ironmans and said "Hello" and blasted away to the dragon's house. He was going with them. They all had special swords. Then Spiderman pulled up next to them. Then they all landed the airplanes and the dragons came out and the fire was everywhere. The fire got Joker and he fell to the ground.

I hope you enjoyed.

Goodbye, The End