say this

This is Dunkleosteus.

He's in Squirty's new dinosaur book. It has magnets. Andy loves it. Of course it's filled with big words, and Andy loves to hear them.

On Saturday night, smart aleck Uncle Phil said, "Hey Andy, can you say 'dunkleosteus'?" And then he laughed.

Andy didn't even look up at Phil; he just said, "Dunkleosteus", and kept on playing.

daddy slipped up

And I know this because when I came downstairs last evening Andy was running around in a tight circle chanting, "Aw sh*t! Aw sh*t! Aw sh*t!"

I said, "Andy! What are you saying?!?"

He stopped running and said, "Dammit."

Shawn was red as a beet.

Now how do I undo this?

cellist in the backseat

On the way home from Walmart today, Andy was in the backseat talking to himself. I couldn't quite hear what he'd said, so I said, "What honey? What did you say?"

He looked up from the book he had on his lap and said, "Yo Yo Ma."

Maybe we're watching too much Seinfeld?

gross

Andy has a thing for rocks. He just loves them. He particularly loves gravel. Any time we walk on our alley behind our house he stops every 15 feet to pick up a handful of tiny rocks and throws them. (And then gets yelled at for throwing rocks, obviously.)

Yesterday my friend Kate and I took him to the zoo. All was going well. He'd found some gravel here and there and shoved his hand into it, thought about throwing it, and then put it down when I spoke sharply to him. Then we got to the goat pen.

And what do goats do? They poop. A lot.

Do you know what goat poop looks like?

It looks like gravel.

As he said, "Rocks!" and his hand reached for the pile of "goat gravel", the shriek I let out was probably heard for half a mile. He jerked his hand back in terror, looked up at me with a quivering lip and burst into tears. All the other mothers laughed hysterically. That made him even more upset because he thought they were mocking him.

It was as close a call as they come.

imitation is....scary

Yesterday I was standing at the bathroom mirror messing with my hair. Andy came into the bathroom and started rooting through the drawers. He does this a lot, but I prefer it to his other bathroom activity: standing on the toilet throwing Tums on the floor.

I was pretty intent on my hair-ironing, and it was quiet, though I could feel him at my feet. I finally looked down to see what he was doing.

He was sitting on the bathmat holding a [capped] disposable razor. He was running it up and down his legs.

That doesn't bode well.

it was too quiet

And when I went in there, he was running his trains through the litterbox.

commands

Andy talks a lot. A lot.

The thing that Shawn and I find the funniest is his repertoire of commands.

It started out a few months ago with a few: Grab it, take it, have it, hold it.

Grab it = grab that and give it to me.
Take it = take this from my hand.
Have it = I want that.
Hold it = Hold it for me - or possibly - I want to hold that.

He's really mastered the two-word command.

Here's his current list of commands that we hear on a daily basis:

Grab it
Take it
Have it
Hold it
Pick it
Snatch it
Throw it
Drive it
Kiss it (he holds out whatever body part he's hurt in my face and says, "Kiss it!")
Scratch it
Hug it
Wipe it
Carry it
Climb it
Slide it
Slice it
Stab it (this is a fork thing)

I'm sure there are more that I can't remember. Sometimes Shawn and I will crack ourselves up just repeating this list to each other, in the same bossy tone that Andy uses when he orders us around.

i'm confused

Andy's chocolate milk cup is in "time out" right now. He asked me to put it there because he was mad at it.

I wonder what the chocolate milk did to him...