Tuesday, April 26, 2011

ShoutLaughLove: Truth, Humor, Difficulty and Beauty of My Journey

Truth:  Little Monkey Man earned his blog name because he is everywhere.  Into everything.  And all but impossible to keep track of.  Truth:  Some days I don't know if I am going to make it through his childhood.  
Humor: I never cease to laugh when he is around.  Sometimes I laugh to keep from crying...or committing a homicide.  But I laugh everyday.  This morning it was because he had ALL the blankets and ALL the stuffed animals in his bed...and poor Snug woke up with nary a thing.  And he was under the entire mound munching a contraband apple.  I did not let him see my laughter, rather quietly shut the bedroom door to compose myself before laying down the law.  I am "The Warden" after all.  Humor:  Whenever he smiles at you or wants your attention, he has taken to wiggling his eyebrows up and down to see if he can get you to smile.  
Difficulty:  This boy doesn't sleep.  At least not as much as I need to re-cooperate from him/the day.  We've tried removing naps, but he crashes between 5 and 6 pm only to be up and ready to face another eight hours by 8pm.  As it is, even with a short nap, he is still going strong (in his bedroom) often as late as 10pm and always always up by 6:30am, often earlier.  And that is when bed-clothes-stealing, contraband-food-eating takes place.  Difficulty:  He is sick quite often, both with virus related and allergy related things.  He catches everything.  Literally every two weeks he has something.  You can't keep him down while he's sick...so often he just has to stay home from school and church and run around like a maniac.  No fun.  


Beauty: Little Monkey Man, although you wouldn't know it from first glance, is actually an extremely caring sensitive little guy.  Sure, he will step/fall/trip over his little sister smashing her face first into the floor.  But he's always ready with a hug and a kiss to tell her he's sorry.  Even if he does have to grab a hold of her pigtails and yank her face up to give the kiss in the right place.  Beauty:  Our family wouldn't be the same without him.  Not sure what we'd do with all the calmness and quietness.  We'd be a very boring family!
so much shouting, so much   laughter
This post is part of "ShoutLaughLove".  I wasn't even going to post today, but I know there are other moms out there dealing with super-active, strong willed, bull-in-a-china shop kids.  Blogging just puts things in perspective.  

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Aww, I love your little Monkey Man!

suzannah | the smitten word said...

oh my goodness! my james is a bruiser, but not quite so wild.

ever the heart-melter, tho, huh? we'll forgive anything with those sweet boy-babe glances;)

thanks for linking. we can sleep when they're grown, right? ;)

CM said...

Oh my, that first shot, I instantly thought of how much he looks like his daddy! They look so alike. Well, at least what I've seen on your blog, since I've never met your guys in person :-)

The sleep thing...I'm with ya. Cubbie is up at 0530 or 0600 every morning, even on weekends (you know, the two days of the week I'm supposed to be able to sleep in!) Hang in there. I know he's a lot of work right now, and so is my Cubbie, but we pray and hope that in time, he will outgrow some of his behaviors. Have you read any of the parenting books by William Sears? He talks about how their youngest child was a strong willed child and how they dealt with her challenging behavior. It helped us to put things in perspective.

Kim M said...

Seeing his picture brings a smile on my face. I've always thought his eyes were captivating, but with the wiggly eye brows!!!! Oh my goodness, I would find them hard to resist!!!

Hang in there, God gave him the very best parents he needed. And God will give you everything you need to parent him. Good thing you have a sense of humor when you also have to be the warden!!!

Unknown said...

Nathan doesn't sleep either, drives me INSANE because he always wakes up Teagan being so loud.