Applesauce

Jack loves applesauce, but is hesitant to eat it unless it is decorated with approximately 74 sprinkles. (We have had many arguments over how many sprinkles are TOO many.) Usually he's pretty amenable to getting any sprinkles at all (after a particularly nasty incident) and we use this as leverage to get him to eat the other, more nutritious things on his plate. As in, yes you can have sprinkles if you finish your fried okra and catfish. JUST KIDDING. He doesn't eat fish. KIDDING AGAIN.

Tonight we bartered some bites of steak for sprinkles, and Dan teased him that there weren't any left, holding up a mostly empty sprinkle container. Jack looked over to me with his head tilted down, through his eyebrows in a kind of creepy manner, and said, "yes there are" in a growl-y voice.

"Whoa Children of the Corn!" I laughed.

Well, Jack thought that this was hilarious, and for the rest of the evening he was chanting, "Children of the Cor-in, Jack of the Cor-in!" Because extra syllables are requirement in Southern linguistics.

First Words

You know, it is kind of monumental what a person's first words are, in an ironic sort of way...I say "ironic" because my first word was "star" and I am so clearly not one. But I digress.

Sydney has been blabbing up a storm (A STORM) and her two first words are, I kid you not: "Mama" and "Blahblah-Blahblah". Just say it, that second one. If it sounds like a cartoon noise than you are spot on. Now these two seemingly unrelated utterances are the exact opposite of that: I truly beleive, in my CORE, that it is not a coincidence. To her, they are relational constants. Mama=blahblah-blahblah.

You know how all of the baby books tell you, "TALK to your infant, they will use your constant stream of verbal incontinence to learn how to communicate!" and my darling child has done just that. She has learned how Mommy communicates: BLAHBLAH-BLAHBLAH. I think that maybe Jack has gotten to her.

I know, I know...(and a poop buffet)

I have been remiss. But the title of this post is not an apology. OH NO. It is the repeated phrase that follows any sort of instruction that I give my sage 4-year old. The good news is that sometimes he follows it up with "I was supposed to...(insert instruction here)" and then does it. I choose to take this as a positive sign that a) he is miraculously listening, or b) he can accurately read my strong desire to toss him out of a window and diffuse it. Sort of. That second one, besides being a great survival instinct, is pretty much the only way that 4-year olds are awesome...unless you count creating an unbelievably enormous pile of crumbs under their chair at the dinner table and then falling OFF OF THEIR CHAIR and into it during the meal as awesome. In that case, he is awesome every night.

On a completely different tangent, the brilliance of the spacing in my children's ages is not (as one would think) due to ovulation, but is more based on my own experience growing up. My sister is 3.5 years younger than I am, and I remember taking care of her even as she was an infant, and I figured that worked out great for everyone...well, except for maybe her, so let's DO THIS.

Today Jack proved his might as an older brother yet again while he "babysat" Sydney (she sat in his mini-club chair while he played don't-let-the-baby-fall-out) so I could clean up the utterly disgusting remains of a recently devoured poopy diaper. YES, my life is that gross. I won't get into any more detail lest you vomit on your computer, but let me just say this: dogs suck. And this is coming from a DOG LOVER. The only way the situation could have been worse is if she, demon-dog, after consuming said poo-wonton, had then upchucked THAT on the carpet. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the night, shall we?

My Alias

Jack finds it hysterical that my parents and Dan have other names besides "Pop-Pop" and "Daddy," etc. He was going around the dining room table at dinner, announcing people's real names and when he got to me he said my name was, air quotes included, "Lauren 'My Mommy' Frances."

Overheard

While in the bathroom cleaning up after Jack had puked on my mother's dining room table: I can't BELIEVE that I throwed up!

Raisins

Jack is a huge fan of raisins. He loves to eat them right out of the little red boxes, usually while snuggled on the futon upstairs watching cartoons. Now, Jack is, at best, a careless eater. So therefore there are often rogue raisins in and around the futon, and when I happen across these, my first thought, as someone who has lived through two terrible cases of PPSD (Post-Puppy Stress Disorder), is "Please God let that be a raisin."

The interesting thing, as Dan points out, is that I KEEP GIVING HIM RAISINS. The way that I see it is a) they are fruit, and b) they are not Cheetos.

This week Jack and I, as a rare treat, went to the grocery store alone together (this is only moderately easier than going to the grocery store with Dan, the cart-packer). While in the produce section, Jack spied some dates...which, to the uninitiated, are just very large raisins. He convinced me to buy some and, thinking that they'd be easier to contain than their smaller cousins, I agreed.

Fast forward to later that evening, at snack time, when Jack is eating dates. Fast-forward again to when I find a half-eaten date STUCK TO THE ARMREST OF THE FUTON. Ironically this was not upsetting to me, as I knew immediately what it was. It would, however, be quite worrisome to perhaps someone who had lived through PMST (Post-Monkey Stress Disorder.)

Weather and, unrelatedly, smartasses

For anyone who isn't living in NC this time of year, I am so, so sorry. This is absolutely the best part of the year in my opinion. The weather starts to warm up in the afternoon, just enough to negate the need for any sort of coat or jacket, and I can walk through my backyard with no shoes on without the fear of freezing toes (although I still do have a healthy fear of dog-doo toes). The daffodils are starting to come up and EVERYONE is outside. You see your neighbors again and the dogs come out of hibernation and are no longer glued to the hearth. And also NAKED BABIES.

This Spring Jack is building a garden in our backyard with the aid of a very able and sweet Aunt. They started this weekend by selecting a spot in the sun to start the beds, buying some untreated lumber and manure, and also spent some time ruminating on what the best things to grow would be. They settled on radishes, basil, green beans, sunflowers and baby peas. Actually, Jack insisted on the baby peas, over and over. This seemed odd to me as he only mildly likes peas, but after I heard him chanting this under his breath it made more sense: "Baby peas, baby peas, baby peas and baby poops!"

This is an opportune moment to segue to another story about why I am a bad parent...namely because I laugh at stuff like this instead of chastising. Well, when I say "bad" I mean bad the way that a precocious 4-year old is "bad." Because they do things they shouldn't. But usually those things are funny, and worth getting in trouble for in the end, right?

Jack has accumulated quite a language repertoire by age 4, and certainly has many favorite words and phrases that he uses as often as possible. One of these is "let's not take any chances" and also, "ONE THING AT A TIME PLEASE!" Now, I don't know how many of you regularly verbally wrangle a 4-year old, but let me tell you, it takes a lot of brainpower. He has become an expert on turning something that you say to him into a convincing argument for him to get what he wants. As much as it can draw out our conversations, I really love it. He is just so clever and annoying--I could not have asked for more!