Raising a Little Boy

Even though two can be at times a frustrating, hair pulling, mommy crying difficult age to interact with, I find that 90 percent of most of my days are filled with joy. It is some what challenging but always rewarding trying to help Rhett learn.

I know I posted this picture on the last post but I love his little smile in this one. It is his, oh so handsome, genuine smile.

A few days ago I decided that I should start Rhett on regular toothpaste and leave the training toothpaste behind. My reasoning behind this is that he loves the flavor of the training toothpaste so most of the time he would just lick it off the toothbrush and so it wasn't really serving a good purpose of training on how to brush his teeth. I saw that the regular toothpaste said that it could be used after 2 years old and for ages 2-6 to just use a pee sized amount. I gave it a try. The first couple of times that he tried to use it he sucked it and then got really mad at me, but then I told him that he needed to spit it. He tried but it was pretty unsuccessful.
Tonight I decided to make a game out of it. I told him we were going to play the spitting game and that we only play the spitting game when we brush our teeth. I would brush and then after a few seconds I would joyfully exclaim that it was time for him to spit. He loved the spitting game. After a few minutes of brushing when I was sure that we had gotten all of his teeth. I told him that he won. He put his step stool back and then ran to Brock to tell him that he had played the spitting game. I am not sure how I will teach Brooklyn to brush her teeth but I am sure the idea of a spitting game won't have quite the same appeal as it does to my silly little Rhett.
Rhett has taken a recent interest in scriptures. One morning I was trying to get mine read before he was up but he surprised me by waking up at 6, so I did my personal scripture study with him. Since then, he mentions his scriptures several times a day and loves the time that we spend together as a family as we read.
When my Mom came this week she encouraged Rhett to say the prayer. We have tried to help him the past but he has shown little interest in saying the prayer, but he now he wants to say every prayer. It is funny to hear him pronounce some of the words. Last night I was helping him say the prayer on dinner and when I told him that he needed to say, "please...bless...the...food...that...it...will...help...us... be...strong." then he said the "please...bless...the...food...that...it...will...help...us...be..." and then he said nothing. So I repeated the word strong several times but he refused to say a word but I could hear him moving his body, so I open my eyes a very small amount so that I could see what he was up to. When I opened my eyes I could see him flexing and pointing at his arm muscle. I couldn't control myself and I let out a little chuckle. Oh I love my little boy!