Josiah, the rascal

Josiah is at a very, um, challenging? stage of life. I realized the other day that though I have two older children, I have never done this stage with a boy before. It's a WHOLE different ball game. Josiah is a very, very physical child. If one of his siblings won't give him a toy he wants, he will attempt (and sometimes accomplish) to use his heft to push said sibling down and take the toy out of their hand. He climbs EVERYTHING. He hits when he's not happy. He throws his food when he's done. It's charming. (Can you sense sarcasm? I hope so.) I am doing my best to be disciplined about regularly correcting his "offenses" against his family members, but it's ridiculous how often I find myself correcting him. Because he is a hitter, I don't want to spank him because I feel like that will reinforce that behavior. And one of his favorite things to do is climb up into the time out chair and just hang for a while, so the time out situation doesn't always work. (Mostly because he will just heave himself off the chair onto the floor when he doesn't feel like sitting in it anymore, since he can only climb up, not down.)

Today Nia made a simple sundial in homeschool, so we are going outside to check it at regular intervals. We literally are outside for ONE minute. All we do is walk out out of our apartment, onto our sidewalk, mark the shadow and note the time. Like I said, literally ONE minute. Before we walked out, I closed the gate so Josiah wouldn't fall down the stairs and told Nico we'd be back in one minute. (And Nia told him, "Nico, while we're gone, you're in charge.")

When I came back into the house ONE MINUTE LATER, this is what little Jman was up to--I am SO in for it.