Bite marks and sticker residue

Let's begin with a story from this past Friday, where Jonas was, as always, at grandma's house. Lisa has a bunch of foam letters that are used for making posters. They have some heavy duty sticky-tape on the back if you can peel off that backing. She had given some to Jonas to play with. A few minutes go by, and she hears Jonas asking for help (nee 'elp!). Since he asks for help ALL THE TIME, she mostly ignored him, only to hear cries of "NEE 'ELP!! BALLS NEE 'ELP!! Pee-nis nee 'elp!!" Well, THAT got her attention! =) She ran in to see that he had removed the backing to a letter "N" and had promptly decided where it needed to be placed. Not wanting to half-heart it, he had pushed it on there REALLY well. Well enough that she had time to locate and turn on her camera (2 minutes-ish) before he finally managed to pull the thing off! Yes, there waqs a video, no I will never post it... I think we've already deleted it. Hilarious!

Today Jonas came home from school with a perfectly round bite mark on his forearm, and an "ouch report" along with it. Now, I know what you're thinking... and it would make sense: he got bitten. NO- this is not the case. He, in fact, decided it would be a good idea to suck on his arm for the better part of the afternoon today, despite being told to stop. result: hickey with tooth marks. Lovely. It looks pretty bad-- like, to the point that a parent at the park saw his arm when he was on the play equipment and commented that it looked like he had a good bite mark there. goodness... i don't think they believed me when i told them it was self-inflicted!

Brandon and I are slowly trudging through Jonas's "terrible two's". And yes, they are terrible. Let the record show that while I generally update this blog with all of Joe's cuteness, it's not because he's nothing but precious. That child is SUPER whiney, testing every chance he gets, actively defiant, etc. Oh my goodness, these are certainly the days of wondering why we thought kids were a good idea. I've come to the conclusion that God must have made children adorable so that they wouldn't be killed at a young age.... yes. this makes sense to me! Anyway, there's always good sprinkled in there, and even when he's at his most obnoxious, we can usually look back and laugh. For example:

On saturday, Jonas was running around outside and fell and scraped his knee. Yes, he is a real boy now. Anyway, the actual abrasion was about the size of a thumbprint, and the area that made it through enough layers of skin to draw blood was no bigger than a small paper cut-- so anything but dire. You would have thought the child had been drug through the town behind a chariot or something! I mean, ok, I expected the poor guy to be upset when he first fell, but he went way above and beyond the call of duty for "hurT nee!" theatrics the rest of the evening.
He walked around without bending his leg (when he remembered he had fallen, that is), he even crawled around without using his knee for a while when he saw his band aid again. The child even LIMPED around the house for a while after his bath because he could see his band aid again and was reminded of the tragic knee-scraping incedent of '10. While we were taking a bath, he would dig his finger into the band aid and scream "KNEE HURTS!!! HURT KNEE!" to which we would respond "well, you are hitting your knee, that probably does hurt." Poor kid. we finally decided the band-aid was coming off so we could stop the theatrics. That worked perfectly. He hasn't had a problem since. Of course, now i'm scared of what his drama skills will be when hes older if he's this bad at 2!

Ok, I admit, I know that was supposed to be a "funny later" story, but it was really pretty funny at the time.

This reminded me of his stalling yesterday. He got in trouble playing outside because he ran away and refused to come back-- getting closer and closer to the road. Obviously, this didn't fly, so we told him he could either walk himself back to the house for time out, or we could carry him back for time out and a spanking. Needless to say, he chose to take himself. To stall his punishment, he (of course) walked as slowly as possible, which we sped up by counting him; and he also walked in as many zig-zag's as possible by walking by ever single tree or bush, sticking out his hand and saying "moo-me tee" (excuse me, tree!), "moo-mee l'l'l'l tee!" (excuse me little tree!), "Sozzie bush, moo-me" (sorry bush, excuse me) and so on. **sigh** well, i guess that's points for creativity at least! =)