Phases

There is so much advice and so many anecdotes and sayings that people love to tell you about raising kids. Depending on the giver, I find most of these things annoying, some occasionally amusing, and only about 20% right, by my experience. One of the good ones lately, though, is "it's just a phase."

I'm almost uncomfortable about how true this statement is, and how it can be applied to almost any aspect of the dink's life. What a fickle little thing he is, that dink. Here are a just a few.

THINGS THAT I HOPE ARE JUST "PHASES":

Elmo Larger Than Life: While it's true that the dink's love and admiration of Elmo have far surpassed the phase level, what I'm talking about now is a new approach that the dink has taken to incorporating Elmo into his life. The dink has a special, extremely high-pitched voice that he reserves only for pointing out important things to Elmo: "See duck Elmo. Elmo, see quack quack quack..." or "See cars, Elmo. See 'rucks, Elmo." Then it gets worse. "Elmo, seat" (which means that Elmo eats dinner in the booster seat instead of the dink); "Elmo, potty" (self-explanatory); and even "Elmo, teeth" (I'm actually considering buying Elmo his own toothbrush). I can only dream about that fine day when I'll hear the dink say "Elmo, trash."

Bad Mommy: The dink is getting into enough trouble by his own making lately that he's quite familiar with what a "no-no" is and when and where we might discipline him for one. Only problem is that he doesn't understand that the privilege to dole out "no-no's" is not universal. The other day I misinterpreted what he was asking me to do, and I dumped out his entire dump truck full of blocks on the floor. Seconds later he was fighting back tears, pushing out his bottom lip, and firmly shaking his finger at me while saying "No, no, mommy." Oops.

Using Words as a Weapon: I know that all kids embarrass their parents from time to time by saying completely innocent yet wildly inappropriate things...I just didn't realize it would start this early. A couple weeks ago, I was wheeling the dink around Target at the speed of light (by necessity) when we passed a display of nuts. The dink recognized them immediately because J often snacks on nuts first thing in the morning. Couple that recognition with the dink's recently learned language skill of using possessives (Mommy's car, Daddy's shoes), and before I know it he's yelling to strangers: "Daddy's nuts! Daddy's nuts!" A little awkward.

"PHASES" THAT I HOPE LAST FOREVER:

Dancing machine: The other day, a college friend called and asked me if the dink had started taking after his father and become a dancing machine. And the answer was YES. D loves nothing more than for J to plug his iPhone into the speakers, turn on the Pandora kid's music station, and dance, dance, dance. He does the classic toddler running in place dance, and then the twirl in a circle move I'm most fond of, and even some jumping up and down, running through the living room, and swaying side to side for slow songs. He calls music "sikic," and if you're sitting on the couch and he points at you and yells "Sikic!", that means you better get your booty up and dance, fast. Occasionally, he'll trade in his dancing shoes for a good march around the house, best led by daddy, and have us all high-stepping around the house in single file until someone calls "Salute!" and we all freeze in place with our hands to our foreheads. It's one of J's best kept secrets in his professional career that he was a drum major in high school...Lord knows what we've got coming.

Yes to Food: When something tastes really good to the dink, he'll look at me very seriously while eating, and shake his head up and down, saying yes, yes, yes. Yes, mommy, this is what you're supposed to feed me. Last weekend, Jon made a chocolate cake for my family birthday party, and the dink was in food heaven, his head bobbing up and down the whole time he worked every last bite of that cake into his mouth. Occasionally, he would look at me and throw in an "Mmmmm" while he was chewing. Then when I was putting him to bed that night, after he said his cousin S's name 4-5 times in reverence (S played with the dink quite patiently at the birthday party), he told me "Cake, yummy." Dancing he may get from his father. Going to bed thinking about chocolate...now that's my son.