Picasso I'm not...

Week 28

The monkey’s room is painted and it looks great, it took 2 men and 6 hours later…best 170 bucks ever spent. I scheduled Goo.dWill to come do a pickup on Friday so that put us in declutter mode. The hubby got a new desk and book cases for his office (he put it together…that won’t be happening again…manual labor and him do not get along). I have to give him credit he did well. His hands are sore but the office looks great.

I washed a lot of the monkey’s stuff, mostly left over from the boy. I also started putting things where they belong, not necessarily setting them up but just storing them out the open versus the garage or the monkey’s closet. I only have 10 more weekends and the next two are going to be packed pretty full. Next weekend we will go to a friend’s house warming BBQ and the following week another BBQ and girls night. Hells yeah I’m going to girl’s night. I will be my last for awhile.

Back to Goo.dWill the next big task to tackle between now and Friday is the boy’s toys. Holy cow there is so much. I was proud of myself for throwing away the Mc.Donald’s toys he got in our happ.y meal the other day. The toy room is overflowing and 50% is mostly crappy pirate, robot, whatever the theme for the week is toys.

Speaking of the boy, we had a rough weekend behavior wise and Monday did not bode to well at school either. So…we’re calling in a professional. The prof. already made the assessment that the boy sounds like he does not listen to people he doesn’t respect; totally true. Also he initially confirmed one of my concerns at this age that the boy can’t rationalize how his current actions are going to get him in trouble later on during the day. I thought that may be the case.

So, to try something different I made up a behavior chart for him (i.e., downloaded a free one online) we decorated it and we/he decided on what to work on for the week. Every two days that are full of stickers he gets a treat, that he picks and it can’t be a toy or something that costs money. The first round of reward he picked chocolate milk at dinner. We are working at sitting and listening during circle time, yeah…he just wonders. Dressing himself in the morning and at night, this will help when the monkey arrives. Practice writing his name at night, we send his chart and his name writing practice to school with him so his teacher can see.

The hubby and I have been so frustrated with him we’ve lost our patience with the entire situation more than enough times. The professional isn’t someone just for the boy it is also help for us to learn tools to deal with the unfavorable behaviors. I think, as most parents do, we expect a lot because the boy is smart and he looks older than he is. So...we’ve decided to stop the yelling, be more positive and teach rather than scold. Oh he still doesn’t get to watch his shows nor does he get to play if he has had a bad day but we now turn to talking about what happened, talking about the right choices and motivate him with rewards that he chooses. We see the professional for the first time next Wednesday. I’ll report back in.

I’m getting bigger by the moment it seems. Today the monkey was playing footsie with my ribcage, that’s always fun. I’m still tired. I have to take at least a small nap during the day to carry on. My concentration level sucks, I don’t want to do anything but sleep and bitch it seems lately. Oh well. Only 10 more weeks then it will all be over right…HA…I’m not naïve enough to believe that. But I do think I’m armed emotionally to handle what is thrown my way.