C'mon 4!

This kid.  Killin' me.  He has the ability to melt my heart in one word, but the other 87% of time, I kinda wanna wring his scrawny little neck.  The lack of listening is reaching epic levels.

On Wednesday, I arrived at day care to pick him up at the same time as another mom.  I happen to like this woman so we were chatting while collecting our darlings' things.  Alex had his coat and hat on and he headed for the door with his friend.  He knows he has to wait for me, so I called out a quick Julius! and he stopped. But then he and his friend looked at each other and took off.

They ran to the other end of the building and locked themselves in the bathroom.  When we caught up, they were behind the locked door laughing like two cracked out squirrels.  I put on my best Mad Mom voice and told him to open the door that instant.  That request was met by louder raucous laughter.  Luckily, the day care people are smart and put a lock on the door that is extremely easy to open from the outside.  As I was opening the door, the two little shits were screaming with delight and attempting to barricade the door with the garbage can.

The delightful screams from Alex came to a screeching halt when I got in the bathroom, and from about 2 centimeters from his face, told him in no uncertain terms that this was not a good idea.  His expression went from "SO MUCH FUNNY!" to "whoa...shit just got real." in a nanosecond.

We got out to the car and the mindless nonlistening to instructions continued.  And continued still when we got home.  He and I were in the garage and he started spinning the back tire of a bike hanging on the wall.  I told him to stop because he could hurt his fingers.  He looked right at me while I was talking, and as soon as the sound of my voice stopped, he looked away and spun the damn wheel again.  With that I told him to go inside, sit on the couch, and think about why I was so upset and what choices he should have made.

I finished up outside, had a talk with him once I was inside and everything seemed back on track.  Until he was in the bath and everything came undone.  I calmly explained to him that it was making me upset that he wasn't listening and asked if he understood me.  He looked up at me with no emotion and just said, "Nope." So I told him I was done and that he needed to call for someone else to get him out of the tub and I walked out.  Trav asked what was going on and then said he would go in and talk to him.  But when he tried to open the door, he discovered that little shit had gotten out of the tub and locked the door.  Travis asked me if I by any chance had locked it and when I said no, he told me he was going to handle it, but I was not allowed to interfere.

Travis very rarely yells at Alex.  And this time he was pissed.  And Alex immediately freaked out to the point of near hyperventilation.  After a lot of crying all was right in the world and we read books before bed.  So, yeah, Wednesday night was super!