Time-out

We have never really tried to use time-out as a punishment for Jonathan. We both have felt that he wouldn't really understand it, yet. But now that JR is 2, I think he can understand it, so I decided to try it. This is how the my first attempt went at time-out.

Jonathan, like most toddlers, throws fits sometimes. When he doesn't want to do something he will do something that he knows he is not supposed to do. We have refrigerator magnets on the fridge that he can play with. They are letters, and we have told him a number of times they belong on the fridge, and he keeps them there, and to not put them on the floor. And most the time he is really good about playing with them on the fridge. So today, JR started throwing a fit and he decided to go over to the fridge and start throwing the magnets on the floor of the kitchen. I decided this would be a good opportunity to try time-out, so I did. JR sat in the chair for 2 minutes with no complaints. Then when his time-out was over, I explained to him why I put him in time-out, and asked him if he would clean up the magnets he threw on the floor. He obediently got off the chair and cleaned up his magnets. I thought to myself, well the time-out seems to have worked, right? Well what did Jonathan want to do right after he had cleaned up all his magnets. Go back and sit in the chair. He thought it was fun. So not sure that it worked as a punishment, but at least it calmed him down enough to do what I asked, hehe.

Easter and other stuff

I have a ton of things in my head that I have wanted to blog about, but I'm not sure how many of them will actually make it to the blog before I forget them. It seems there are so many things that JR is doing that I want to talk about, but I never seem to have time to blog about them right away and then I forget so this may be a log entry as I try to remember everything that has been going on in our lives.

First I just wanted to share some cute pics from Easter. Mike was put in the bishopric (he is the second counselor), so we had to get him suit, and we found a (little large) white shirt and tie for JR for Easter so I just had to take a picture of my handsome boys all dressed up for church on Easter morning.

Of course JR wouldn't wear the tie to church, but at least I got a picture.

JR is growing up so fast I can't keep up with all his milestones. In the past month he has learned how to open doors and the refrigerator. I think I posted in an earlier post about how Mike shuts himself in the spare bedroom to work on his research so JR cannot interrupt. Well one day JR just surprised us and opened the door to find his dad. He did the same thing with the refrigerator, just one day he decided he wanted his sippy cup in the fridge and so he went into the kitchen and opened it. It's like he could always do it, but just decided to do it. So far it hasn't been too much of a problem. He still can't open the doors that lead to outside yet so that good and if we need to, we lock the spare bedroom door so Mike can get some work done. I finally had to put one of those doorknob cover things on our laundry room door, since that is where all of Mike's tools and stuff are and JR thinks it's fun to go in there and pull out daddy's tools to play with.

JR has started learning things so fast and he surprises us everyday with what he knows. He almost knows the whole alphabet. We work with him on certain letters and there are some letters that he knows better than others, but out of the blue he will recognize a letter that neither one us knew that he knew, or had worked with him on. He is always noticing letters all over the place too. For example one day when I took him to the store, we were walking past a handicapped parking spot and it said VAN on the ground, and he pointed the A out to me. He also is always pointing out the H on the Huggies box of diapers. He also likes to point out letters he sees in books we read to him. It is the same with number too. His favorite number is 2, but he can recognize all the numbers from 0-9. He has counted from 1 to 10 before, but I think it was more of a fluke. When he counts he usually starts with 2 and will sometimes skip a few number here and there, and end with 1. But I think he is starting to get the order they go in, he just doesn't always get it right. He is always trying to count things too, like tonight, at dinner, he was counting the peas on his plate. Colors are the other thing that he has just picked up. He really loves to color and he can name most of he colors that his crayons are. Again he is always pointing colors out to us. The one he notices the most and always gets right is orange. Sometime he gets the other ones mixed up, but mostly he know all the colors of the rainbow plus black, brown and white. He knows all the signs for the colors too. Okay, I'll stop bragging about how smart my kid is, but I really am more amazed at how quickly he picks all this stuff up. I'm sure most kids learn this way. They are just taking so much in, in such a short period of time, it's crazy.

I'm sure there are things that I have forgotten that I wanted to post about, but the last thing I am going to write about are some of the cute things JR says. I know I've mentioned how well he talks and how he communicates in sign and speech. But he still talks like a little kid and not everyone is able to understand him. Here are few of the cute things he says that I want to remember.

"pacer" pacifier

"gackuum" vacuum

"tak you" thank you

"tuk" truck

"couds" clouds

"bog" frog

I know there are a ton more, but I am having a hard time thinking of them. Many of his words are pretty clear, but I think they might just be clear to me, since I hear them all the time, and I'm not remembering the cute way he says them. The only one that Mike and I have picked up in saying is "pacer".

Okay one last thing that I just remembered, a mommy moment I had not too long ago. For JR's birthday Mike and I got him a basketball hoop. He loves that thing and will spend a lot of time just shooting balls at it. He has a pretty good shot too. Anyway, one day I was playing with him and he would shoot and I was basically rebounding the ball for him and giving it back to him to shoot again. He shot it, I rebound it, and he looked at me and said "tak you, mama". It was just so cute, and it was the first time that I really remember him making that whole sentence. He has said thank you for a long time, and he has said mama for a long time, but never as a complete sentence, and of course it made me get all teary, lol.

That is all for now, maybe I will get better at updating this more often. Let me find some more pics to share at least.

Oh yeah, something I meant to blog about. I took JR to the Museum of Natural Science in Jackson. He loves it there. Mike had to do some research in Jackson, so JR and I spent the morning at the museum. He loves that place, it is kind of like a mini aquarium and he really loves to see all the fish and reptiles. We were planning on staying the night in Jackson so we got a hotel room, but then JR got sick, so we decided to leave that night instead. It was a good thing we did because we took JR to the dr the next day and he had strep.

Checking out the fish.

Signing fish.


Eating lunch in the hotel room. The only time we let JR eat lunch on the floor watching TV.