These Days: Sammy

These days Sammy is full of personality. He wants to (in this order): play baseball, go to school, do helper jobs. He talks about being a baseball player ALL the time! His belt is like a baseball player, his shoes are like a baseball player, he needs to carry his bat (foam, thank goodness), he wants his daddy to play baseball with him, he was Zack to help him hit the baseball off the tee... et cetera! He's getting pretty good at connecting with the ball on the tee. He then takes great pleasure in flinging down the bat and racing around the far tree while Zack shouts, "Home run, Sammy, HOME RUN!"

He is also going to "Ducks Class", the name of his little class at his pre-school. He's pretty disgruntled that he doesn't get to go every day. If I say something like, "Oh, you are a cutie-pie!" He says, "No.  I am not a cutie-pie.  I am a cutie--pie DUCK!"  In lieu of Ducks class every day, Sammy would be glad to go to Zack's school every day - either to pick him up or to help in the classroom like we did last year. Since we don't get to help in the classroom in the same way (we do go help in the library once every two weeks and I'm about to start helping with something while Sammy's at school), he would settle for picking Zack up every day. He wants to bring either his cowboy dressup outfit or his phone or his Elmo with him.  I don't know if he doesn't want to give them up right then or if he likes all the attention he gets from the other moms!  Since carpool is taking care of Zack's school pickup for us two or three days each week, he keeps finding himself disappointed, which he makes sure to show by drooping his head and shoulders, putting on his saddest face and swinging his arms loose in a full-body display of moping.

We've realized we let those adorable, personality-full, little faces he puts on keep us from following through on consequences like we mean to! It doesn't take much in the consequence department - a quick break in a chair, a removal of some item - but sometimes he seems so heartbroken that it's easy to believe he must already be corrected enough. Think he's playing us? Ha. We're going to refocus on positive, consistent disciple (mostly from this book)... and try not to be such suckers for those expressions!

One thing I'm loving about right now is that Sammy is so excited whenever I can think of some little helper job he can do around the house.  It almost always gets a positive response and a request for another helper job.