Back to Johnnie Saturday

We hadn't had a regular Johnnie Saturday in a month, considering Lisa hadn't worked in a Saturday in that long. But today she does and I was looking forward to it, especially considering I had had somewhat of a win last night with one of the Universe's tests, this one being another Lisa blow-up episode. Here I was thinking I was going to rescue Johnnie from that and I ended up helping Lisa de-escalate actually. And more likely she de-escalated herself after another poor way to express her own anger. But express it she did and by the time I got there, there was no need for the Johnnie rescue. I simply eased her into whatever needed to be done to normalize the situation, which really was simply to put her sheets in the sink to soak. Sounded simple but effective. And so this morning I looked forward to picking up Johnnie and spending the day with him. And I'm going to start this post with what would be the worst thing that happened today, which was Johnnie got to see a different parenting style from me. He once said what his mom and dad had in common was that we both yelled, my yelling happens on the road when I'm driving and directed at other drivers and I know I have to work on that. But today it wasn't about yelling thank God. Johnnie and I went to the yard to hit some balls and after just two pitches, instead of throwing me the ball, Johnnie hit it well past me and we had to stop to look for the ball. He did this twice and I told him if he did it a third time, we would stop playing. He did it a third time. We stopped playing. I told him I was disappointed he didn't listen. Not yelled. Simply told him. And I told him as punishment he would have to do reading instead of watching his videos. It actually was a good break for me because I got to work on my presentation for the Q Board Meeting next week that was due yesterday and that I didn't get around to doing. I did it right then while Johnnie was reading. Pretty good that I got it done actually. And Johnnie in the meantime was reading this book about trivia and facts and after a bit, started to come into the room and started giving me these facts actually, as if he was sharing. He knew I wasn't mad anymore. How could you stay mad at this kid anyway? I told him punishment done after I got done with writing up my powerpoint. And he could go back to watching Ninjago. I thought I handled that ok. At the very least, better than yelling at him and scaring him anyway. I mean he was just playing the way he always does. I would never want to suppress that. It was all about listening to me was what I wanted to make sure he remembered.

So if that was the worst thing that happened today, the rest of the day really went like a routine Saturday. I picked up Johnnie and Lisa was already in a much better state than last night. She even asked me to sit with them for breakfast <although I had already planned to do the routine breakfast at Elysee with Johnnie>. I think it was her way of keeping up HER routine of doing something as a family, which was really nice considering we had had a pretty good last couple of Saturdays (Cali Science Museum one week, the Third Street Promenade last week). And actually we had had a pretty good week too, having had dinner twice already until the blip last night. Johnnie had some cereal although I told him to not eat so much when Lisa was out of earshot. He already knew. We took Claire back to the apartment, still in her period of course, and then one surprise before we took off for Elysee. Johnnie's Pokemon T-shirt that I bought last week had arrived and we went to the package room to get it so he could wear it today. He loved it of course. And so off to breakfast we went, the usual at Elysee, and on to grocery shopping. We shopped for Lisa first and then to Sprouts for me. I didn't really have a lot to buy for today since I already went to Trader Joe's yesterday. So we were done by 10:30. And Johnnie had a full round of Ninjago before we even went to lunch. And then he got to watch some more after our Panda Express lunch too. And I was only all too happy to let him keep watching while I took a half hour nap. After all, all that Roswell binge watching last night had me going to bed at 1 AM. It was all good after the nap though, which brought us to the baseball incident and the disciplining episode. I made it up to him though, not that I felt I needed to. I made him some paper nunchucks. A couple of sheets of cardboard, one rubber band and it was actually a nice harmless weapon that I'm sure Johnnie is going to have loads of fun playing with, just like his newly crafted ninja star weapon he came home with last week. So today Courtney was supposed to come over to Lisa's so I knew she wasn't going to stay that late. It also meant Johnnie wasn't going to do another night of hot tub play and that's ok. At least I got to make him an early dinner: chicken noddle soup and a Trader Joe's bambino pizza. I got to take care of him for the whole day which I hadn't gotten to do -not for an entire day just he and I anyway. And despite my own little blip playing baseball, I thought we had a pretty good day. All I wanted for my Saturday.