Two is company; Three is a crowd

How many bosses do you have in your home? In this house we have three: me, Chris, and Ayden. The biggest thing is that Ayden does not ask for anything. He gives orders. Some time last year, around November or December, we started working in earnest on turning Ayden's orders into questions/sentences. If he says "pick up my Spiderman" (and yes, that really is a normal thing for him to say), we tell him that he needs to ask us and make a sentence, and we model the question: "Mommy, would you please pick up my Spiderman?" Ayden then spits out his improved non-question "Mommy, please pick up my Spiderman." We do this at least 20-30 times a day on weekdays, surely over 100 times a day on the weekends when we are together all day.

This leads to my dilemma. His primary models for learning language are his parents, aka his bosses. And what do we do all day? We bark out orders to him. "Ayden, get dressed", "Ayden, please throw your trash away", and "Just put your shoes on, already!" are all common sentences in our home. We do not ask him to do these things, because generally they are not intended as requests. It is not negotiable for Ayden to get dressed in the morning before school. Rock, meet hard place.

Chris and I have recently discussed this, with each of us pointing out that we always bark orders instead of asking. I agree that it's a problem, only I don't know the solution. I am not okay with asking Ayden to do things that I expect him to do. Asking is for favors, for things that are nice but not required. All I know to do is work on the here and now….try to keep the orders to a minimum and rephrase certain things. It is interesting the things you don’t realize you do until you step back and look for a second.

By the way, meet Ayden's new fish....her name is cycling between Nemo and Dorey. Stay tuned to find out what it will remain. Oh, I forgot....the fish is Franklin's pet....what was I thinking?

Also, check out our little guy's freckles...I guess this is just another sign that he is growing up on us. "Say what? Say what?" Many thanks to Hannah Montana for Ayden's new favorite phrase. By the way....the face that goes with the phrase is too funny!

Oh yes....and here is Ayden pouting (which he is getting pretty good at)!

Earlier in the week Ayden told Mimi on the way to school that "Mommy smells like candy. The candy smell makes him want to eat his Mommy up! " I am not quite sure where that came from, but now I am watching out for the attack...........

We also took a little time this weekend to hang out with Uncle Adam. Ayden was absolutely thrilled to see Uncle Adam and took off towards him with great, big hugs! Our time included a lot of races (which Ayden always won) and just fun in general.