I get to spend a good chunk of my time
these days laughing my butt off. Ethan
is blooming into this little mouth on legs, full of interesting points of view,
jokes and clever little quips. Much of
my laughing comes out of sheer surprise at the ways he's spontaneously decided
to put words, phrases and concepts together in his own novel, unique way.
I just have to share with you some of more
hilarious things he comes out with:
1) New improved food names - Saying things
right is tough, and made up words are more fun anyways, we think. So his
unintentional renaming of foods is totally brilliant. Not cucumber, it's 'fewcumber'. Not marshmallow, it's 'arse-mallow'. There's also 'chino', short for cappuccino,
which refers to any warm, milky, preferably chocolate-based beverage. And
banana phone, which a a normal banana that we pretend to talk into, with a very
serious looking face, before cracking open.
2) Onomatopoeia names - There are many
hilarious times when he goes about naming things like an Australian. The names don't sound right, but you have
pretty good idea about what he's referring to because it just sounds like a sort of description of that
thing. The other day, squirt gun in
hand, he says, 'Mama, I need to phew you....PHEW-phew! PHEW-PHEW!' He pretends to shoot me. Or that the 'Tig-tig-ah' is
the guitar. He says it such a melodious
way, it almost sound like strumming a tune. Or when he asks me to 'cheese' him, which means, 'Take my photo.'
3) Daddy- related things - The relationship
between daddy and boy is really a kind of playful power struggle wrapped in
fascination with a big dose of admiration.
Ethan kind of wants to be him, kind of wants to get the better of
him. Ethan's words for daddy's things
include: 'daddy's milk' (beer), 'daddy's rainbow' (the mouth guard Thom wears
at night to stop grinding his teeth), ‘daddy's doggy’ (the paw print tattoo on
Thomas wrist). There are also the
comparisons Ethan regularly makes about the similarities and differences
between him and daddy. The other morning
he crept into the bedroom. I spied him
out of one half open eye at Thom's side of the bed, inspecting daddy intently
before exclaiming at the top of his lungs, 'I have tiny fingers!' And then there are willies, a club that I am
seemingly excluded from, but is a topic of discussion for the fellas of the
house. I overhear him noting the
criteria of their exclusive club with, 'You have a winky, dad? I have a winky,
too!'
4) The 'shut up and stop being so clever'
things - When he was my little bundle of baby fat, the hierarchy was clear
cut. We were the clever ones and he
didn't know much. Now, it is fairly
obvious that the old guard is fading and clever clogs is asserting his smarty
pants all over the place. It sucks to be
put in your place by a three year old, but that is apparently how it goes
sometimes. It goes like this:
Thom flicking through Instagram, 'Everyone
thinks they're a model now! I could be a bloody model!' Ethan, ‘You not.' Thom
looks at him open mouthed as Ethan chews a mouthful of cereal, then adds, 'I
am!'
Or when we were informed by his nursery
that he was the ring leader in all the little boys covering themselves with
coloured marker drawings. As Thom was
washing him off, he explained that we don't draw on ourselves, to which Ethan
pointed at Thom's tattoos and astutely replied, 'But daddy do it.'
5) The world revolves around me things – It’s
great that he is allowed this brief window of time where everything can seem to
be about him. As challenging as that can
feel at times for the parent, it offers some hilarious times that leave me
tears. While strolling through the
grocery store, an announcement booms over our heads calling for all checkout
people. Ethan, looking shocked, yells
out, ‘Someone’s talking to me!’ Or when
I took him to London, stopping of at my office briefly for some lunch and a
potty break. He’s meeting my colleagues and
loving all the attention. One woman I
work with comes into the office and greets him with a smile, and he says, ‘You
come to say hi to Ethan, too!’
He is scarily sprouting new words and
phrases all the time. Getting far too
grown up for me to feel comfortable! I
ran into a friend from baby massage class in what seems like another universe
now. I remember us chatting away over
our little, delicate lumps of baby. It
seems now that in those times, their little personalities were hidden, like
their arms and legs under baby fat, waiting to emerge. It struck me, as I chatted with my friend the
other day, how different our little ones were now. Still our babies, but mostly only because we
knew that these chatty, opinionated little beings were physically the same as
those little lumps of baby fat we massaged somewhere in the seemingly distant
past. I sometimes miss that little ball
of cuddly baby, but he's so fun now, I really couldn't choose which stage is
better. It would be impossible to choose.