drama king, dogs and one more thing

So you can see from the below video how good he is at acting, very dramatic ending I must say.
He makes a great tiger don't you think!







and then there's dogs.

we don't go outside because of dogs. we don't go to the park because of dogs. JoJo is EXTREMELY scared of dogs. He was semi-afraid of them before, but after ONE particular incident, he will SCREAM everytime he hears the doorbell......

One of our neighbors has a dog called Daisy. She is maybe a year-ish old. Very active, very feisty dog. The breed is some sort of collie I think, probably a cross breed. Anyway. The doorbell rang and I opened the door, JoJo was standing behind me. DAISY just appeared, acting all crazy and peed on the mat outside the door, and was rolling around and just so hyper is scared the crap out of him. He started crying and I had to tell the girl, who owned the dog, to PLEASE keep this dog on a leash! This dog is constantly running the neighborhood, loose, terrorizing some kids, including mine. JoJo won't even sit in the back garden anymore because they let this dog run all over the place, and Daisy came into the back yard once and scared JoJo.

Now we are having to deal with this. Slowly we open windows and doors, for a short time. We point out dogs in the street, we make doggy noises and we show him doggy pictures and we talk about dogs. I am sure it will be a long time before he is comfortable around dogs. Especially crazy ones.

I told JoJo to just call the doggy Crazy Daisy. Yup that's her new name. He thought that was funny. So now he wants to look out the window and look for "crazy doggy". Maybe that's a good thing.

One more thing. We were at the commissary yesterday and I could tell this guy kept looking at us. He eventually came up to us and asked us if JoJo was Ethiopian. After some exchanging back and forth, he was from Ethiopia too and we were talking about JoJo and when he came home and how marvelous it was etc etc. Then he speaks to him in amharic. I haven't been teaching JoJo amharic and he wasn't even speaking until a few months after we came home with him.  I do think JoJo understood what the language was though, he seemed to smile and then turn his head away almost embarrassed. But it was great meeting someone from Ethiopia, we certainly don't meet that many over here, and I would love that for JoJo.  That's why I am seriously considering a culture camp in the next couple of years.

teeth brushing (again) (warning: gross pictures!)

Ok. So we were having problems with JoJo not wanting to brush his teeth. again. It's been an on going battle and it changes every day. One day he brushes, Next day he refuses. Uggh.  This is the 2nd worst battle we are going through....with the poop one being the first of course.

So. In desperation I am thinking...what if I show him pictures of rotten teeth? hmmmm.....isn't that too gross though? Would I be a mean mommy to do something like that? Well, that thought crossed my mind for all of 2 seconds and I was on the internet googling rotten teeth like there was no tomorrow.

I found some. Some pretty gross ones. Some that were TOO gross. I even showed my friend and she about jumped out of her skin when she saw them. Ok, not quite the effect I was looking for, but it worked. She didn't go running to the bathroom with her toothbrush, but hey, she is also not 3 1/2 yrs old. She knows better.

So. this morning, I get the proverbial "NO" when it came to teeth brushing time.
So I said "ok" you stay right there I have something to show you.....(thinking in my head, omg is this really going to work, am I going to give him nightmares, is it going to freak him out, will he start crying....) and then after those 2 seconds passed I got the pictures, sat down, and showed him these.....

yep, pretty gross.

He just stood there, in shock I think, just staring at them....

I told him this person didn't brush his teeth and this is what will happen if you don't brush your teeth.

Then I showed him this picture...

look at these nice clean teeth! This person brushes her teeth EVERY DAY.

Then silently, he just took my hand, walked me to the bathroom and said "I wanna brush my teeth".."no black" "no black mommy".....

SO we have victory. for today anyway.
I am hoping he won't need anymore reminders, but you never know.