It's spring break now which means company! We love our cousins! My cousin TH and his family came to visit us for the weekend. They arrived Friday night and I was excited for Kai to meet some more family.
Friday night before bed, I unhooked the xbox and hid it knowing Kai would want to sleep upstairs. I didn't want him waking up early just to play. Kai did ask and told me he wouldn't play xbox. I'm secretly thinking to myself, "I know!"
Cousin CH and I get up and head to the gym in the morning where she puts me through her crazy workout.I was able to do it all but I certainly feel it today! It's the good kind of hurt!
We come home and get the troops rallied up with the intent of packing a picnic lunch and heading to the park. At this point, Kai had been on the newly returned xbox for an hour. I ask him to turn it off and get changed out of his pajamas. He starts playing his ipod. I give him another few chances to make the right choice and he refuses. I unhook the xbox, take his ipod, and head downstairs. I pass CH in the kitchen and said quietly as I passed, "Prepare for war." I could feel tension radiating off of Kai.
I give him time to come downstairs and change and, in the meantime, we decide to just eat lunch at the house and then go to the park. I go upstairs to see Kai just laying there doing nothing. Again, I ask him very calmly to go change. He refuses and says he doesn't want to go. I validate his feelings but tell him we, as a family, are going to the park to have fun together. He refuses to change. I said, "Kai, do you know what mommie's have to do with 2 year olds? We have to help them change their clothes because it's hard for them to do themselves. You have a choice, you can go downstairs and change or I can help you like you are two. I will take off your shirt and put on a clean one and then I will take off your pajama bottoms and put on clean pants. He got up so quick with a grin and ran downstairs. I'm thinking, "Ok, crisis averted. We're good."
I cook his noodles for an extra couple of minutes because the last few days he has talked about liking them that way. He comes over to eat and says, "Ma? Cook long time?" I said yes. He says, "6 or 8 minutes?" I said, "8 minutes" even though it was only 5...trying to avoid a crisis. Kai says, "No! 10 minutes." I then tell Kai the noodles are good and to eat them. He starts getting unhappy because they aren't cooked for 10 minutes. I tell him he has two choices. He can choose to eat the noodles that I made for him or he could choose to not eat. I was NOT going to cook the already noodles longer. He gets ticked and goes into a full blown meltdown. I won't go into details but hubby was home to see this meltdown and help me out. It took a while to calm him down. I was so thankful Hubby K was around to help me through this one. He usually isn't. Our cousins certainly got an eyeful.
After a while, all of us left but Ken and Kai. They met us later at the park. Kai was happy and fine when they came. From the park, we headed to Little C's soccer game. He had two goals and two assists and they won 4 to 0. It was crazy windy which made it really chilly so we were thrilled when the game came to an end and we headed over to the neighboring burger joint for dinner.
The rest of the weekend, he has been fine. We have had a great visit with the family. Today after church, he spent some time upstairs teaching little cousin H to play his favorite game on xbox. He has more electronic time then he should today but we are supposed to create moments where he is the teacher and he, on his own, was teaching cousin H and I wasn't going to get in the way of that. At one point, he came down the stairs and told me he was teaching H and he was so proud.
We are thankful for our family visiting. Kai quickly became comfortable with them all and I know he will be sad to see them leave in the morning.
Now, I just have to survive spring break.
