“Momma, read sounds,” means he wants me to read his book where I ask him what sound each picture makes.

“Momma, nigh night cookie,” means he wants me to lay my head on his stuffed Cookie Monster next to him while I try to get him to go to sleep.

Bedtime is when his language really comes alive. He’s a fantastic story teller (I’m told he gets this from his mother), and recounts the entirety  of his day to me while laying there in bed in the dark, me with my neck cocked at an awkward angle so that I can lay my head on his Cookie Monster next to him. All I have to do is ask, “what did you do today?” and his brain starts firing and his mouth starts sputtering all the events of the day.

Admittedly, he always talks about the shows he watched that day because, I’m not going to lie, there is a lot of TV watching going on in this house right now. I like that he talks like he was a part of them, though, many times saying things like, “Go go get momma fof, watch out rocks!”  That, roughly translated, means he helped Diego rescue the mommy sloth from the rocks, I think. I must add that he always punctuates his descriptions of adventures with Diego with a hearty fist thrown in the air.

He then talks about the big things, like going to the pool, and little things, like eating a pear for snack at 10 that morning.

A lot of times it takes me a minute to figure out what he’s talking about because the detail seems so minute, and I actually have forgotten by 8 at night that he saw a bug on the front porch that morning.  It’s crazy what kids will focus on, what they will take away from the bigger picture.

My favorite night time conversation, so far, has got to be the one I had with him last week after a day when I took him to Chick Fil A for lunch. While we were there, I let him go play in the enclosed play area while I sat on the other side of the glass, kept an eye on him, finished my sandwich and quickly checked my email (it was right after I launched the #helpSam fundraiser). I looked up from my phone to see what he was doing to find him and another little boy on the floor. The other boy was crying, so I walked in, asked Kendall what happened, was met with expected blank stare, then told Kendall to tell the boy he was sorry and give him a hug. I really had no idea what happened and figured they probably just ran into each other, but I also knew there was a possibility that Kendall pushed him since that seems to be something he’s trying out these days. I very sternly reminded him we don’t push, and stayed inside the play area the rest of the time we were there, subjecting myself to the awful stench of toddler shoes, rubber floors and cleaning solution.

Later that night, during our bedtime breakdown of the day, Kendall recounted the following:

“Bok bok! Yum..” (Chicken was yummy)

“Play, slide.”

“Push, baby, cry.”

I interjected, “Kendall? You pushed the baby?”

“Baby cry. No, no. No push. Sowwy.”

I was so taken aback by his honesty. I, of course, told him pushing was bad, but I also praised him for telling the truth and for telling the baby he was sorry. It was one of those weird parenting moments where I had no idea how to react, but I felt incredible pressure to act the correct way because this seemed like a really important little lesson he was learning, right in front of my very eyes.

We went back to Chick Fil A for breakfast yesterday (I told you all already that I grow my babies on CFA). The whole time on the way there he kept repeating, “No push. No, no, no. I no push.” And he didn’t. I watched him like a hawk and he played very sweetly.

While he ran around the play area, jumping and swinging and sliding, it occurred to me that he is much closer to independence and childhood than the infancy he left behind. He’s learning lessons, he’s telling stories, and before I know it I’m going to have a full fledged little kid on my hands, one who asks questions and teaches *me* things. I can’t help but wonder how big he’s going to seem when we come home with the new baby in 7 months, how much he’ll have grown and learned by then, and how much that will be magnified by the tiny, helpless newborn.

Kendall is 2 years old/ I’m 10 weeks pregnant

But, as the months went by, we became more conscience of our foul language usage in front of Kendall and at least made an effort to try not to make “fuck” every other word in our conversations.  It was just hard to be diligent when he clearly had so little grasp of language and how to use it.  It’s not like a six month old is going to know any better, right?  Well, as he got older, started crawling, pointing to things we got a little tougher on ourselves, but I can’t say we completely eliminated the word from our vocabularies.

It’s just so fucking useful. Like when that asshole on the toll road decides at the last minute that he needs to get in the farthest open lane so he can speed through the toll pass, and he cuts you off and you see you and your child’s life flash before your eyes – appropriate time to say, “Fuck you you fucking asshole!  Why don’t you quit being such a fucking dickhead driver!”

Another appropriate time to express your irritation with a potpourri of f-bombs?  When you get home from Ikea with a seemingly easy to hang, simple ceiling lamp, and proceed to spend the next 4 hours pulling your hair out and trying not to kill your husband because the stupid Swedish piece of shit won’t hang level. Couples therapy should be sold next to the checkout stands at Ikea (like magazines and gum are at grocery stores).  I bet it would be a great price.

So it was in the midst of trying to get this lamp up last night, while simultaneously trying to not kill each other, that I hear Kendall in the background saying his favorite word, “duck”.  It’s quite cute.  He loves ducks.  He will point to his rubber duckies and say “dck!” and he also correctly labels and identifies the bastard ducks at the pond that still won’t eat anything we throw at them.  And sometimes he will just call anything a duck….and sometimes it just sounds like “uck”…. Fuck.  He is just saying “duck” right?

Kendall is 11 months 3 weeks and 2 days old

It stared late last week when I was doing the dishes.  I had Kendall blocked into the living room by the couch, ottoman, and some strategically placed chairs and yoga ball (that thing just continues to be useful).  He could see me over the bar, and would occasionally scream or grunt in my direction if I happened to make eye contact with him when he was not otherwise occupied by a curtain or the laundry basket.  I made it a point to ignore him, despite his increasing frustration with me and obvious boredom with the sea of mundane toys I scattered about to entertain him.  Clearly, he wanted out so he could come into the kitchen, climb into the dishwasher and suck on all the dirty dishes, but I was washing a cheese grater and knives this time around so that wasn’t going to fly.

All of the sudden, I was startled from my scrub, rinse, load trance by a sound I had never heard before.  It was so forceful, so purposeful, so loud, so undeniably the sound of my son screaming “MOM!” for the very first time.  I looked up in disbelief and then did what I probably wasn’t supposed to do in that situation.  I smiled, laughed, jumped up and down, and ran over and gave him a big hug.  I mean, this was huge!  I had never really even heard him babble any mmm sounds, and there he just busts out the most perfect, grown up sounding word he has ever managed to eek out.  We had a little celebration right there in the living room, and I put off finishing the dishes for the rest of the afternoon.

Obviously delighted by the response he got from me, he’s continued, and continued, and continued, to practice this word…over, and over, and over.  Anytime I step away from him he starts in on the rapid fire succession of “moms”.  He mixes it up with different intonations, various tones and volume levels.  If I’m standing, he crawls behind me, and hits the back of my legs, “Mahm…mom…MOhm…MAM..MOM!”  Each and every one of them a plea for something, not at all like the “Dah DA Dada!” noises he makes when he’s happy.  ”Dada” never sounds like “feed me!” or “I want to chew on that cord you just took away!”  My mom said it best when she told me yesterday that “mom” might as well mean “I want”, “I need”,  ”I’m tired”, “I’m sick”.

Ahhh…but it’s still delightful to hear.  Honestly, at this point I’ll take it any day over the screaming and grunting.  

Kendall is 11 months and 5 days old