What did you say?

Aiden is seriously turning into such a fun little boy. I swear he understands pretty much everything we say and he is saying new things every day. We are at a really fun age. Aiden and I have so much fun playing right now that this morning when I dropped him off at his little mother's day out, it made me sad. I didn't want him to go to school I wanted him to spend the day with me. I cherish this time cause it may not last long.

As far as discipline aiden and I have a very good routine. He does something he's not supposed to, I talk to him in my firm voice, spank him on the bottom and tell him to go sit in his time out chair or if there is no chair available to just sit down where he is. I tell him he will have to sit in his chair until he calms down (most of the time he is crying either because of the spanking or because I took something away from him). When he has spent enough time in his chair to be calm (around 2 minutes give or take) I go get him and tell him that what he did was a no-no and make him give me a hug, then he can get up. So that's how it works and I am having to do this less and less every day. When we first started I think he was probably being sent to his chair 10-12 times a day?? Now it's like 1 or 2 times a day, not bad right? So yesterday something crazy happened. Aiden loves to brush his teeth in the morning. He would brush his teeth 10 times a day if I would let him, but I don't. I'm trying to teach him toothbrushes are for morning and night. So yesterday morning we got up on our stool and brushed our teeth and then I got him down and we left the bathroom and he started freaking out about leaving his toothbrush in the bathroom, he wanted to take it and play with it. He threw himself down on the ground like he was about to throw a fit about it and I was about to go into my "discipline routine" firm voice, spanking, chair but before I could say anything he hopped up and ran to his chair crying. He put himself in time out! I stood there like well how is this gonna play out? Ben and I have agreed that whoever puts aiden in time out has to be the one to get him out of time out and hug him so that it's not always one parent is bad, the other good. So I just kind of stood where I was for a couple of minutes, I heard him calm down and I was about to go tell him he could get up when he came running to me and gave me a hug and then went off to play. It was amazing! It was like he caught himself throwing a fit, he knew he had to go sit in the chair and calm down and then when he was calm he came back and hugged me. He went through the whole discipline routine by himself! I love it!

Next story is about aiden's verbal. Aiden says so many words now I have literally lost count. I told the Dr. the other day that he says well over 40, I haven't tried to put them all on paper since then though. Plus he learns new words almost every day so it's hard to keep up. The only thing is that you have to be used to hearing aiden talk to really understand all the words. Sometimes I don't even get them all, but I get most. Lots of words sound similar. Anyways recently aiden went through a "spoon" addiction. He loves spoons, wants to take spoons everywhere, wants to hold them while he sleeps, wants to eat everything with a spoon. Give him a sandwich, he'll ask for a spoon. Crazy kid! He would also call forks "spoon" so ben and I have been trying to teach him the difference in "fork" and "spoon". I now think this was a mistake. Aiden knows the difference but when he says "fork" it sounds exactly like a very bad word. This is ok at home because ben and I know what he is saying but in public, not so much. You might be thinking well that's ok how often does "fork" really come up in public? When you have a 22 month old who loves utensils, it comes up a lot! Today for instance he had a little baby plastic fork from his breakfast that he was carrying around and I put him in the car to go to school without realizing he was still holding it in his hand. When we got to school I got him out of his seat and took the fork away to leave in the car. The whole way through the halls of sonshine bible school he is yelling "fork, fork fork" except for that it doesn't sound like fork! I felt the need to tell everyone we passed, he is saying "fork, we left a fork in the car". We very much need to work on our pronunciation of "fork" or either go back to letting him call everything a spoon. What was really wrong with that anyways?