The Definition of Ornery

Uh, that would be the third "A" as in Avery. In recent days, he is really growing up and changing a lot, however he has developed some personality traits that are very high maintenance. Like any 2 1/2 year old he now has his own opinions about things. His favorite actor is "Map" (Alayna informed me of this) and his favorite song is the last stanza from "Farmer in the Dell" being "The cheese stands alone..."

He's very different from Alton and Alayna. Just in the last 24 hours he 1

1) Dove onto a pile of pillows and hour before church, but hit the windowsill instead. Notice the lovely goose egg between his eyebrows.

2) Attempted to roll down the stairs in the laundry bucket (the first landing stopped him thankfully).

3Drew all over the wall with a green marker in the homeschool room.

Sorry, I don't have pictures of the two times he spilled his drink and the bowl he dropped and broke all this morning. Nor evidence of his bad table manners yesterday at Panera Bread after church where he was shoving huge amounts of food in his mouth to entertain Alton and Alayna. The part where the sandwich meat was hanging down out of his mouth seemed to be grossing out the lady at the next table. A mother's discipline is somewhat usurped when the Daddy is also stifling laughter at his antics. He finally got taken out to the car where Rob made it clear to him that that behavior wasn't acceptable.

Whenever he does get spanked, and that is frequently these days, he goes to each of his siblings acting pathetic and saying, "Daddy hurt me." He waits for them to hug him and then on to the next person. We always counter with, "Oh, did you disobey Daddy?" To this he always says "disobeyyyyy" in a sad voice.

I've decided that putting him in preschool would be helpful in keeping him stimulated and bringing some peace to our homeschool room. I always do put my kids in preschool because I'm not good at doing all the little songs and games etc.. that preschoolers do. The difference here is that I usually wait until they're already 3 and then I put them in for two days and move it up to 3 days the next year. I may start him now and put him in for three days right away! That is my project for the week, get Ave enrolled in a preschool.