Mal Adjustments

This weekend, Mal was doing something funny/irritating and I jokingly told him never ever to do it again. He immediately repeated it, and I said, "That's it. You're fired. You can't be in the house anymore; you're going to have to live on the streets." Alarmed, he immediately wailed, "But I can't live on the streets; I'll get hit by a car! Can I live in the grass?"

Then he decided that the grass would also be a bad choice because once the grass dries out later in the spring, we get stickers that last until the fall. I assured him that he can live wherever we live as long as he wants, and even if I joke about kicking him out, I never will.

He had a very "opinionated" weekend, and he tends to voice his negative opinions with much sturm und drang. A couple of times, I had to ask him to just stop what he was doing because I couldn't handle it anymore. At one point, I asked him to stop whining, and he whined, "I'm not whining! This is my normal voice!"

Later, he'd wanted to go to the lake. He introduced his idea by saying, "It's the perfect day to go to the lake!" And he was right. It was in the low 70s and full sun. Again, one of the perks of living in the Austin area.

These days, we're all Sonic all the time.

When it was time to come home, he was suddenly very exhausted. He wanted me to carry him... which, thank goodness, I can no longer do, and he's big enough to understand this.

As we walked away from the park, he kept whimpering that he was so tired, and he couldn't stand to walk all the way home, and he needed a short cut. After a couple of blocks of this, I said, "I need you to stop complaining. We have to walk home, it's a beautiful day, and I don't want to hear complaining the whole way." He insisted he wasn't complaining, similarly to how he'd said he wasn't whining.

I started just stopping in my tracks when he'd start back up. "Oh my gosh, this is taking forev--" Then he'd notice I wasn't moving. After a few times of this, he said, "Mom, I'm NOT complaining! That was someone else!"

Eventually, we got to the top of the hill and he took his shirt off (we'd dressed in the morning when it was cooler, and ended up being inappropriately warmly dressed for the middle of the day) and once he could see our house, he perked back up.

Drama aside, Mal got a lot of vitamin D last week. It was gorgeous and we spent a lot of time outside.

I want Mal to feel comfortable talking about his feelings, even the really big ugly ones. I just need to help him understand when a situation is immutable and he just has to plow through it... preferably, for his own sake, with a good attitude. It's a tough one. Wish us all luck!