Ugly Bug!

Jo, the past couple of weeks have been a tremendous improvement in Jonas. We started a zero-tolerence spanking policy, wherein once Jonas gets to 3, he gets a spanking always. This has worked wonderfully. He has maybe had 5 spankings in 2 weeks... this is a huge improvement from before where it was more like 2-5 spankings per day. He has almost completely stopped pitching tantrums (for more than a few seconds), he actually is listening, and while he still whines, he is getting MUCH better! Glorious! And to top it all off, I heard a bit on NPR a while back that was talking about a research study of children who were spanked (not beaten... spanked) and they did MUCH better in school, were better adjusted, played better with other children, and were all around better. the only down side was they said some children who were spanked after the age of 12 were sometimes slightly more aggressive... well, that makes sense!

Jonas has been working hard at the "me" "you" "I" concept. He is starting to get it. We are trying to teach him how to not-speak-in-third-person. He still says "Pick You Up!" all the time, and we say "Pick ME up?" "sees, pick ME up!" (of course, he doesn't say his "c,k,g" sounds... they're all "t" sounds now.) He does have some wins, though... he said "I want musit!(music)" yesterday, and occasionally he throws in another "I" statement correctly.

Tonight we have the best-smelling toddler in the USA. We took a bath, and Jonas wanted to use "daddy sam-poo". "Ok", I thought, the bottle was empty... so he couldn't use much. Brandon has some AXE body wash that he got a long time ago because he wanted a rubber duckie with devil horns that AXE was giving away with the wash... anyway.... SO I shook what I thought was little shampoo down to the bottom of the container and squirted out onto Jonas's waiting hands enough body wash to easily cleanse Brandon, Jonas, Rudy, and Me. He was delighted-- and what'd not to love? it's BLUE! In conclusion... Jonas smells very, very good. and of course, he had to put on deodorant after he got out of the tub. He loves-- check it. LOVES putting on brandon'd deodorant. He probably puts it on twice a day. I don't mind. It smells good! Anyway.. yeah-- good smellin' little boy!



Now, before we got in the tub for a bath, I usually grab mine and Brandon's basket full of body wash and shampoo out of the shower, but tonight there was one of those ugly bugs that for some reason are in our shower about once a month... they look liek a cross between a centipede and a camel cricket... a disturbing combination. Yet, I have grown soft to these atrocious little creatures, as I feel like they're pretty pitiful when they get hit with water. They aren't very hardy like ants or beetles... they get wet, they flail for about 3 seconds, and then they just go limp and wash down the drain, dead. Anyway.... yeah. they are kind of pitiful in that way. Point being, there was an ugly bug to dispose of. I got the toilet paper, while Jonas watched with interest and interjected his comments, such as "Oo no! udee bud in bad-det (ugly bug in basket)." I got the bug and said I was going to throw him away, and so I did, into the toilet. I then proceeded to clean out the bathtub while Jonas continued his ugly bug commentary "udee bud fall down in wa-der (water). Jodis see udee bud. OH NOO! Udee bud craw (crawl) out! Udee bud comin' out! MOMMY!" Sure enough... I thought I squashed the bug, but apparently not. He had started to crawl out of the bowl but couldn't get completely out. I flushed him. Jonas continues, "Mommy flush udee bud down podee (potty), bug going bye bye, bye bye udee bud!"
It was pretty cute! =)

So, when JOnas goes to bed we usually do prayers... usually, Jonas will just point at stuff to pray for, but tonight he prayed for super cute stuff... we prayed for(in this order): Obi & Dee-neey (danny), Mimi, mimi sat! (grammy, grammy sad) Old mimi! Old mimi sat! (old granny, old granny sad) old mimi's house. un-doe dim, ann dee-oh (uncle tim aunt jill), Summer (yes, pronounced correctly). Precious =)