Punishments

Honestly, I love Matt unconditionally. But recently he's been pushing me to the end of my rope. It could be because I'm home with him 24/7 now. Or it could just be the age. Who knows. But when he makes me mad, he inevitably makes me love him a little more with those big, sad, brown eyes.

He's taken to doing things to Robert that I would have expected to see from him after we brought Robert home from the hospital. You know, that whole adjustment to another human being taking up space in Mom and Dad's arms. But c'mon kid...it's been almost an entire year. Why now?

Today, for instance, Robert was sitting on the floor, innocently playing with a toy and Matt walked over to him, stepped on his ankle and as soon as Robert began to yelp, he walked away as though nothing had happened.

After his time out, I make him hug Robert and tell him he's sorry. When I spoke to him about his actions the other day, his eyes filled with tears and his lip began quivering. This is very unlike Matt because after a punishment is doled out, he gets over it and moves on rather quickly. So I asked him why he was sad and he replied, "he was sad that he hurt Robert." (Insert heart melting.)

Unfortunately it hasn't stopped the behind the scenes torture. Recently a similar event occurred and as I mentioned before, Robert can be quite whiney. So when I hear the whine, I tend to ignore it figuring he's probably just stuck standing up and will eventually figure out how to plop down on his hiney. This time, however, the whine grew to a frantic cry and when I turned around, I found Matt sitting AND bouncing on top of Robert.

I immediately reprimanded him and made him sit on the couch while the rest of us went about our business. About 5 (ok, maybe 10) minutes later I realized that I had forgotten to tell him he could get up. I also realized that it was awfully quiet over on that couch. I snuck around the corner and found this...

Darn you child! Why must you be all innocent like when Mommy is still trying to be mad at you!?!