The Greatest Task of All

Aiden has finally hit the "terrible twos". He very much enjoys asserting his independence at times when it is the LEAST convenient for mommy; such as when we are late for an appointment. This is the time for him to decide he wants to change his shirt and do it ALL himself. He is not completely skilled in dressing himself yet, so I have to help him with his shirt a bit. However, it is very unacceptable for mommy to help and if she does it means the shirt must be taken completely off and he must start over again all the while throwing a tantrum. If I want to get out of the house within the next half hour I must be sneakily stealth in helping him get it on. Then we get to the shoes...AHHHHH. This task can honestly take 20 min. in and of itself. But again, it is unacceptable for mommy help...(on most days. We have "helpless" days too, but that is for another post). I have never seen a child move in a little ball kicking and screaming "I do it" like Aiden can as he tries to get his shoes on.

The beginning of a tantrum...

Now we move on to nap time woes. On some days it honestly takes me almost 2 hours to get Aiden to stay in bed and take a nap. "TWO HOURS!," you say! What a waste of time, just give up right? I can't! This is mommy's way of showing Aiden who is BOSS! (Ok let's be honest here...this is mommy's way of reminding herself that she is the boss). :) Plus if he doesn't have a nap he will fall asleep anywhere at about five and then we have a little boy who wants to stay up until eleven o'clock at night! So, the battle continues. I fondly refer to these two hours as "the napping game". Here are some pictures of what Aiden chose to do when I thought that he was snug in his bed with sugar plums dancing in his head.
"Hi mom! Instead of napping I thought I would do you a favor by thoroughly cleaning my hair with four different kinds of shampoo. While I was at it, I thought I might just get under the sink squeaky clean by dumping out shampoo every where under there too." (sorry the photo is sideways...blogger refused to let me turn it right side up ???)

Look at all the gallons of shampoo in his hair. Nice and slimy...

This is the amount of bubbles that were made by pouring about 20 cup fulls of water over Aiden's head to get all that shampoo out. Boy was he mad that the water just kept coming! This picture does not do justice showing how much shampoo he really had in his hair. The water looked like I had poured a TON of bubble bath in there.