January 6, 2014

In junior high I had a mystery book that had two endings.  You came to a certain point and if you wanted to find out what happened if ______ ,then turn to this page.  If you want to find out what happened if ______, then to turn this other page.  Yah?  We've all read at least one of those.

Here are two proposed tales of my morning.

Proposal #1

Eat breakfast, morning project, blaaaah blah blah.  When I'm done with housework Levi eagerly asks what the morning project is.  I've got it all set and ready to go!!  I explain that we're starting to learn about the fruit of the Spirit, sing him the fruity song that I remember from VBS at my grandma's church when I was about eight years old (it lists all the fruits of the Spirit), and he's very excited to paint his fruit.  I had bought packs of unsweetened Koolaid so the dried paint would be sort of scratch n sniff, mixed them with a little water, and there you have it: smelly water colors.  After painting I trace his body on a big sheet of paper, explaining that each week we'll add another one of his pieces of fruit to his body. The top of the sheet will say, "Levi is filled with the fruit of the Spirit."  It'll be a nice visual.  Together we listed examples of what it would look like to show love to each other, to our family, to our friends.  He eagerly pasted his newly-painted cherries (to represent love) on his life-sized tracing.  Then we played charades.

Proposal #2

Eat breakfast, morning project, blaaaaah blah blah. When I'm done with housework Levi eagerly asks what the morning project is.  I've got it all set and ready to go!!  I explain that we're starting to learn about the fruit of the Spirit, sing him the fruity song and he's very excited to paint his fruit.  He paints a few of the fruit pieces that I had drawn but uses so much 'paint' and force on the paint brush that they nearly tear. Of course he wants to taste the Koolaid paint, and to our dismay it was horrifyingly bitter.  Bummer. So much for edible paint (then again, is Koolaid really edible??? Ugh).  Luke wants to participate, so I mix some food coloring into a little bit of leftover yogurt for him to "fingerpaint."  Oh dear.  Levi wanted me to help him paint so I did about half of it with him. That was fun. 

 

 

 

Well that was a five or ten minute project that made my kitchen look totally blown up.  And my baby.

Then we went to the living room to trace a life-sized Levi.  I don't have huge rolls of art paper on hand so I used a roll of wrapping paper.  Levi unrolled the whole thing.  Chastised him for unrolling the whole thing.  I traced Levi, and started to explain what we'd do with it. He's running away from me.  Ah, a teaching moment!  Levi, one way that you can show love is by listening -  Levi, stop (he's going nutty).  No, STOP.  Levi, one way you can you love to mama is by lis - LEVI. If you continue to be this rude and disrespec- Levi just go to your room. By this point he and Luke had unrolled the whole roll of wrapping paper down the hall and were stomping all over it.  Luke's running on the Levi tracing and drooling purple drool on it.  Levi's screeching because he's in time out, and even though he knows screeching or screaming - happy, angry, or otherwise - is a cardinal no-no, he does it anyway.  I lose my cool and start yelling.  Luke's running around naked because I had to take off his clothes (see above) and haven't had a chance to put anything else on him.   Dressing him is like dressing a seizing octopus running for its life in a category four hurricane; I literally sweat. I crumple up the rest of the wrapping paper and throw it away.  Finish cleaning up the kitchen.  Levi gets a swat on the keester for continuing his screaming.  I tell him he's not coming out of his room until he stops screaming and will remain quiet for a time out, and if that's the rest of the morning that's no skin off my nose.  I'm grossed out by the purple slobber on the life-sized Levi picture so I throw it downstairs. Fine.  I'll do something ELSE with this Koolaid fruit.  Levi finally remains quiet for three minutes - though it took thirty minutes to arrive at that point - and I can go in and talk with him.  In my best Claire Huxtable voice I quietly and firmly explain - AGAIN! - that disrespect and screaming will absolutely not be tolerated in this house, am I perfectly clear?

Now.  What was our lesson? Oh, love.

Indeed.

Well, I'll let you pick the ending that you think really occurred.

At any rate, I cut up our fruit and put it in a fruit bowl.  I put out a bowl of cherries and each time he does something loving he may have a cherry.  I didn't come up with these things on my own, I'm copying from Amanda at ohamanda.com.

It's hard to be three, it's hard to be cooped up inside for days in a row with weather that would make a polar bear cuss.  So I did what any other mom searching for sanity would do:

Here ya go, buddy.  Jump until you're ready to sleep.

It worked. ;)