Trivia and the ineffectiveness of time outs.

Adrian likes time outs. When threatened with a time out, he will deliberately disobey me or Dillon in order to receive one. With this being said, one would assume we wouldn't offer them as an effective form of punishment, yet we continue to do so. Why? Because I don't know how else to let him know I mean business. Time Outs in our household consist of him sitting on the floor of my bedroom with the door closed stripped of his beloved Coco and binkie in the dark, he cries at the end of every time out and inevitably apologizes for the action that provoked his being reprimanded. He is typically very well behaved, but tonight we encountered a situation. He hit Joplin, not hard, just little taps on her back, instead of petting her. When I tell him hey kid, don't ever hit a dog, that dog will bite your nose off your face and you won't have a nose anymore, he continues to hit her. I again take his hand (Joplin is on my lap at the time just wanting a little interspecies lovin' and attention) and tell him NO, do not hit her Adrian. He pauses for a second, and then deliberately defies me and starts hitting her again. I am not a patient person. I admit it, and I cannot change it,  and do not like having to repeat myself, especially when I know he is ignoring me on purpose. I asked him "What do you think you're doing?" to which he looks me dead in the eyes and says "I hitting her." Then the time out hits. I take his binkie and his Coco and put them on top of the TV, high enough so he can see exactly where they are yet just inches out of his reach, and take him hand and put him in my room on the floor. As we're walking in he comments "I like time outs!", I turn around and close the door. I go back in the living room to see Dillon laughing (of course whenever Adrian acts this way it's really actually very, very funny to see this attitude out of such a tiny body, and we always have to try really hard not to laugh until after he's out of the room and we've enforced that the behavior was bad and not funny). Which reminds me of the time I told him to go do something and he looked me in my face and called me an As*hole, another situation where I had to cover my mouth to withhold from laughing (I was so shocked, you don't expect to hear such words out of such a small mouth! And we don't curse often so it wasn't something we were expecting-- just out of the blue he called me an a*shole, right to my face, in correct context one would use in referring to someone else who's being an asshole as such.) I timed him out and when I went back to hug him and tell him I love him and explain why what he did was wrong, he looked at Dillon and said "Mommy's an a*shole." Of course Dillon loses it. It took us several attempts, but we've finally seemed to rid that word from his vocabulary. Anyway, back to tonight's time out, we hear him in our room singing "I'm in a time out I'm in a time out" and tapping on the walls, enjoying his little self. So aggravating yet so hysterical! He knocks on the door and we ignore him. He knocks again and finally I say "You're still in time out! Sit your booty down!" to which he replies "Don't say booty."... I raise my white flag and let him out, he's too cute to argue with.

And now for a little "picture this in your mind because it was really cute" moment. We went to dinner at Drifters here in East Nashville tonight for some BBQ,  and as we're about to leave a Trivia game begins. The guy hosting it starts listing the categories and the first one is Toys, mind you this is primarily a bar but has a few tables for families and larger groups, Adrian was the youngest person in there by about 21 years.  He says loudly "Toys!?" And the whole room looks at him and laughs. It was very, very adorable.

DISCLAIMER/TRUTH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: I write a lot of run on sentences, in the same sense that I talk very fast. I have to get the words out before I forget, and throw punctuation and grammar to the wind.