God's little boy

The combination of working a lot lately and dealing with a kid at the peak of his terrible twos is what has been keeping me off the blogosphere for a while. I just had to share this story, though.

For the last two weeks or so Jake has been pushing the limits. Let me rephrase that. He's been wildly flinging himself over the limits and laughing in my face as he does it. I've never thought of him as a maliciously disobedient child, but I have begun to see glimpses of pure defiance, and it is not pretty. For example, we just got a brand new exercise bike that we're keeping in the living room. We told Jake he wasn't even allowed to touch it, much less play on it. The day after Dan assembled it I was in the kitchen doing dishes and Jake calmly walked in and said "Mom, I just broke the ekercize bike." You what? "I just BROKE the ekercize bike." And sure enough, the ekercize bike was indeed broken. He had actually ripped the console off it's stand, breaking off a piece of plastic that held it in place. He had to have been hanging on it. I thought about hanging him from it again.

There are many more stories that end with Jake screaming at me for disciplining him "don't spank me, mom" "don't send me to my room, mom" "stop punching me in the face, mom."

Ok, so I'm being a little dramatic, but he has really been pushing my buttons. Today I was trying to put him down for a nap and I asked him to go potty before we started the nigh-night routine. He started whining, then shrieking "no potty, mom, no potty" and he actually threw himself on the floor crying. He was really tired, which made it worse. I told him I wouldn't read him his book unless he went potty. Then I thought about the book we've been reading before he goes to sleep, both at naptime and bedtime. It's called "God's Wisdom for Little Boys" and it's a bunch of Proverbs put into little poems, and Jake just loves it. Because we're reading it so much, I thought he may remember some of it. There's a poem about obedience, and I started to quote it, "God teaches children that they should..."

"obey" Jake whimpered. He started to walk to the bathroom. "rules of udders, do ut day say" (the rules set by others and do what they say) "God's little boy no usseptions (God's little boy makes no exceptions) "he minds and fawows anections" (he always minds and follows directions). He quoted it again as he was on the toilet and again when he walked back to his room.

I couldn't help but smile. I'm so proud of God's little boy. And of the authors of this book for turning my whiney snotty nosed kid into a poetry quoting, potty loving angel.