If you ever want to know what your conversational and more specifically colloquial tendencies are hang around a 3 year old for a few months. Connor and I have a new weekend ritual. Either Saturday or Sunday after Nita and I have made our dinner list for the week, we go to the store, just the two of us. Nita stays with Josie. We get a doughnut for him, a balloon with a sucker, and then the tries to convince me that he needs either another doughnut or some jellybeans for the rest of the shopping trip. In any case I have now been informed, by him no less, that when he makes his request I say, “WHAAAAAAAAT? (increasing in pitch all the way) That’s crazy talk.” It was most glaringly brought to my attention Monday morning, while Connor was at the top of the stairs and said, “Daddy come here please.” I told him that I had to get a cup of coffee first and I’d be right up. Of course he replied, “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???? That’s CraAAAAzy talk daddy.” Nita looked over the ledge at me like I had specifically taught him this for that moment.
Another thing that’s going on is my son is very smart and very sneaky. My mother was watching a basketball game (yes that long ago) with him last year and every time they’d hit a jumper she’d say “swish.” Every miss she’d say, “Sonso!” (Stupid in Spanish). Now you would think we might have anticipated that this was going to happen. But in our defense we thought that we were fine until he started with complex sentence structure. (I can feel you laughing at me by the way). So what we learned was they are little sponges who more than likely are witnesses for the prosecution. For example when he was around one year old, we used to jokingly say when something was broken or a process was not going well that it was STOOOPIT. So what word are we trying to break from Connor’s vocabulary now? You’ve got it. But now, the sneaky part. If you remember in the film Pinocchio, a bad man leads the little boys to pleasure island (think 1940s Disney, not Barney Frank). In any case, once the man drops off the boys in the place that will turn them into donkeys he mumbles, “Stupid little boys.” So Connor thinks he’s getting away with it when he says, “the bad man says, (and he whispers) ‘stupid little boys.’” Then we break into our, “good boys don’t use that word” spiel.
Luckily whenever we’re having these discussions I look over and Josephine is intently listening and concentrating. And no she’s not just pooping. She’s paying attention, fool me once.
Speaking of Disney, we were outside last week and Connor decided he was going to climb a tree. So he wanted to sand on something to reach the fork in the trunk. It happened to be a fireplace flue we’d pulled out of the outdoor fireplace. In any case Connor was about to stand on it and I mentioned that as soon as he got on his tippy toes he’d flip it over. So I put the long part flat and then went to take Josephine to the play scape to get her in her little playhouse/slide. Before I took 10 steps, I heard Connor say, “ants.” This is lower case on purpose, he said it like it was curious, not dangerous. I look back and see Connor’s hand on the ground. Now it is not without precedent that Connor puts his hands in an ant pile. He is not allergic (thank God) and somehow seems impervious to the pain. And I mean I’ve brushed fire ants off of him that left big welts and he just stares at his hand. Meanwhile daddy hates ants and ant bites. Anyway, he says, “ants” and I do a jump turn and see him on the ground. I run over to check and start instinctively brushing his hand and there’s nothing. Then I look at the flue and it’s got several on it. I start my visual inspection of Connor to see if he has any on him and then …..Bingo! He’s got one in his mouth. I brushed it out and asked if it stung him and he said, “No daddy. I’m Baloo the bear.” And then he starts singing the bare necessities. My Jungle book boy. Meanwhile Josie starts squealing and dancing to the song she’s heard one hundred times.
And Action! Connor’s latest new thing is to assign each of us roles in his re-enactment of movies. Then he directs us through the scene. Two of his favorites are Shrek and Cars. In Shrek 2, I’m Shrek and he’s donkey. He repeatedly says, “Are we there yet, are we there yet” and I explain the meaning of “far far away.” Mercifully we only have to do this one about five times in a row. In scene two, Connor says, “you be Mater, and I’ll be lightning McQueen.” This is when I have to go through and do the whole tractor tipping scene. Actually during game 6 of the World Series, we had to push pause while Pete and I both got on the ground and acted like sleeping tractors. Connor then honked at us and we pretended to wake up from our sleep and fall backwards. We only had to do this twice because it was bed time. Nita is frequently a Gabor cat from the Aristocats (if you know that was funny).
Sunday night featured the Wizard of Oz. Of course that meant that Nita had to cackle like a witch on Monday and chase Connor around while threatening me (scarecrow), “How about a little fire Scarecrow?!!!” Last night we were outside listening to the crickets and pond frogs. We had to be really quiet and just about two minutes in he whispered to me, “Dumbo, Dumbo DUMBO!!” If you don’t know or remember, there was a scene in which Timothy the mouse went to the ringmaster while he was sleeping and tried to convince him that he was his conscience and that Dumbo should be the main act. That boy remembers everything. And I’m glad Connor and Josie love the classics. I think part of it is it truly is one of the nostalgia items that truly continue to live up to its memory. And as for the other reasons, I’ll just leave it at that for the moment. Anything more would be… Crazy talk!
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