Torturing the Torturer

If I were to pick out a word to describe Ammon thus far on the trip, it would be DIFFICULT. Flying on the airplane really sent him into panic-mode, and it seemed that afterwards he thought for sure I would be leaving him. For the first three days, the instant he suspected that I might be further than two feet from him, he would start screaming. I'm talking full-on panic attacks and screams of horror and terror. If I just stood up to walk into the kitchen from the living room, these panic attacks began - let alone if I went upstairs! It was getting unbearable.

Luckily, the fun of camping and then coming back to a place that was now more familiar, cured him mostly of that. He will still whine if I go upstairs without him, or cry if I try to sneak out of the house, but he's doing much better. It helps to have brothers that are great entertaining uncles and a grandma that is the master of distraction.

Not only has he been torturing us with his separation anxiety, but he has become a picky eater and it's like I'm torturing him at dinner rather than feeding him. It's pretty miserable to eat while listening to a screaming one year old. While he's doing a little better in this area as well, we've still got strides to make.

He gets into everything, loves to whack objects and people with sticks or any other long object he can find (seriously he knocked my sister's eye crooked for a whole evening - luckily it was better in the morning), is happy destroying anything Lydia is trying to build, and is bored with toys in a matter of seconds.

Sounds like he's one, I know, but with the crying and general terrorism, we have all felt a bit tortured around here. So we decided to torture him back for FHE one evening - only in a way that he doesn't realize he's being tortured. How do you go about doing that you might ask (I asked my mom the same question), and the answer would be this:

We took markers to him! Our goal was to make him look as ridiculous as possible. And boy was it fun!!

We could not stop laughing and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The best part was Kenny decided to give him a mustache and that was what kept us entertained all night long.

With the mustache, unbuttoned plaid shirt hanging open, and a string of beads around his neck, he looked so gangster. It makes me laugh just thinking about it :)

Ammon was content to let us draw all over him, it probably had to do with the sucker we gave him while we became tattoo artists, but  I was still surprised at how he didn't resist at all. He just layed there with his head back, as if to say, "Eh, whatever".

And while everyone got in on the action, of course I had to participate myself - after all, I get the brunt of the torture.

We did good work I'd say!

And I think Ammon thought so too, after he was released and checked out our beautiful artwork.

So my little demon got his dues. And that's what the Nelson family does for FHE, torture-time. Now to get wake him up from his nap to see what else we can do to each other :)