time out.

did we mention that we put mercer in time outs now? it's one of those silly modern parenting tools that you see on the teevee, but with mercer, it works (so far). at first, we'd sit mercer down and tell him he was being bad and he had to think about what he did wrong, but he would jump right back up. but, with some persistence, mercer has learned to sit quietly and take his punishments like a little boy should.

the bad part about it is, any time we threaten him with the words "time out," he'll run over to his time out spot and sit. it's like a game. he also has a new technique when we're looking directly at him, telling him why he's being punished, and he tries to move in for a kiss! how sneaky!

yesterday, mercer had three time outs. the first two were for playing with his lunch (smashing it, throwing it, flicking it, etc.) instead of eating it like he normally does. the third was for hitting daddy in the head with a circular saw. it was a toy circular saw, but still... mercer has an ongoing problem with hitting people and he needs to learn that it's not OK to slice pop up with a saw. we've stopped mercer from face-raking people and his hitting has subsided somewhat.

most of mercer's mischief involves not listening to us when we ask him to sit, not run, not throw food, take his feet off the table (oh yes!), not pick up things that aren't his, etc. nothing too bad. yet.