Frumpelstilskin

So we're out of the tantrum phase (one of them that is...our other one is just entering the phase and is a professional), but this is what we've done an even exchange of...pouting or frumping. We went to a birthday party after church on Sunday. This is at the children's museum where Nolan was splashed in the face with water in the water area of the museum (water...how dare they?) There was about a 5 minute cry session where Justin had to calm him down and talk him off a ledge. We were well into an hour past our nap time so what can we say...other than, "Well, it's been fun. See y'all later!"

Oh, and here are a couple of pictures just so Campbell doesn't get left out. Here's where I'm getting pictures of them in the backyard and I catch him trying to climb our back wall. I decided that we've had enough gray teeth and shiners in the past month and grab him off the wall.

And here is the Academy Award winning fit that followed...I see this daily. What I couldn't capture was that he went as limp as a noodle and I almost dropped him because he was arching his back. He finished up his final act in the grass. Wow. He's on a role lately. You know he had a bad day when the director of daycare comes up to me and tells me that he had a rough day. He hit and pulled just about everyone's hair in class right after he dumped his blueberries on the floor and did his own little rendition of I love Lucy when Lucy makes wine. There were even blueberry stains on the floor to prove it. Doesn't he know that he's not supposed to turn "terrible" until he's two?

Two things I know for sure...

When Campbell is unhappy two things can make him go from a complete tantrum to a ridiculous grin in .2 seconds....food and going outside. The owner of the boys' school told me that they have to feed him lunch earlier than all the other kids because there is NO way he's waiting until 11:30 like the rest of them. 11:10 is all he can wait and that's AFTER snack at 9:00. She said that the other day when he ran out of snack he screamed so hard his face turned purple. So she ran to get him more snacks and just like that he just started smiling again. He so has us all trained.

Any time Bandit takes a potty break outside he thinks it's time for him to go outside too. Not a big deal right now, but hard to do with cold weather coming up. If I'm cooking dinner and I can't take him outside right at that second, we're talking about an on-the-floor screaming tantrum. It's not a pretty sight. It's nice knowing that we have some secrets in our pocket that will keep him happy though. He just loves going to Nolan's soccer practices. He shags balls for the team...he's the little Dinosaur mascot. Here are a few of my favorites.

Looking up and loving on his PopPeek-a-boo!

You can't catch me!

3 and A HALF

I have to mention why it's important to say that Nolan is 3 and a half. That half is VERY important. You see, that half has been an overnight shift of sassiness and independence that tries the most patient and understanding person in the world...which I fully admit I am NOT!

Oh where do I start about this week? I must say that I've been pretty proud of our disciplining and how it's working but once we hit that HALF mark our normal tricks up our sleeve are not working...in fact they're failing miserably! Usually if Nolan has a bad day a school, we take away his cars and puzzles and he's right back on track the next day. So when he had a bad day on Tuesday we did that but then he had even a worse day on Wednesday....stealing kids pillows at nap time and waking them up. Thursday was another rough day and three days with no toys is more of a punishment to us than him we decided! We even resorted to spanking although I can count on one hand how many times I've spanked him. I am so desperate to see what will work! So Friday morning we decided to not make such a big deal about thinking that he might be loving all this attention he's getting albeit bad attention.

I called at lunch time to find out that our son (oh this is so embarrassing) pulled down his pants at school and did a little dance for all his friends to see. I promise this is not behavior he learned from us! It sounds funny except when it's your kid and you do the walk of shame down the hall to pick him up. I was really upset about it and called our doctor to see what is causing him to be so defiant. He has a new teacher that started about 3 weeks ago and she seems very nice and very structured which is very good but we think that he's responding to this change. She helped me brainstorm too that we might need to take him off his allergy medicine that I coincidentally gave him the same number of days that he was pulling all these bad days in a row. We immediately stopped that and have had a wonderful weekend. I hope it was the medicine but only time will tell. Our doctor recommended not even talking about school this weekend-that we all need a break from it and we just need to have some family fun time. You know us...we are practically the inventors of forced family fun! But it actually wasn't forced this weekend-it really was fun!

Friday we went with some friends to an outdoor family friendly concert and both boys loved it. They had lots of fun activities for the kids. It was really good to talk with our friends because they all just shared stories of their 3 and a half year olds that make us think that Nolan is a saint! Saturday night we went to Central Market for Burgers and Bock and listened to Justin's coworkers band play and once again it was actually fun! We even got some yummy gelatto and here's proof of how much fun Nolan had.

In the midst of all this frustration with disciplining him. Here is a recap of hysterical things Nolan said:

"Mommy I wanna go buy a hula poop!" (hula hoop)
"I'm sorry for being disRECEPTACLE." (disrespectable)
"My mommy spanks me all the time!" ( to the church nursery worker!) He is such a liar!

We spelled his name on a little craft crown he made at the family music night and he said, "We forgot M SPOT!" He meant that we forgot to spell "Nolan M."