Use your words! On second thought...

One of the untold surprises of parenthood is how hoped-for milestones frequently come back to bite us. In the midst of the worst of Jack's tantrums, we were constantly telling him, "Use your words!" Now that he can express himself better, we sometimes wonder, "Why did we want him to talk?" Especially when some of his words are not words that we want to hear. Of course, some of what he says is pretty funny, so I suppose we have to take the good with the not-so-good.

Jack rarely naps, but when he does and is woken up before he is ready, he is GRUMPY. One of those times, I was trying to cheer him up and tried to give him a kiss. He turned his face away, and I said, "I know, you're having a hard time waking up. " Ever since then, when he wouldn't feel like giving me a kiss, he'd tell me, "I'm having a hard time waking up" even if it was in the middle of the day.

He used to give me a kiss first thing in the morning, but one morning he didn't want to. I told him, "Jack, that's not a very nice way to start my day." And so now, when he doesn't want to give me a hug or a kiss in the morning, he'll say, "That won't be a very nice way to start my day."

He'll tell friends who do things to upset him, "You can never do that again!" And then he'll frequently follow it up with, "What do you say to me?" which is what we say to him when we want him to apologize. When Tom or I do something he doesn't like or tell him he can't do something that he wants to do, he'll say, "I'm not having a very fun day." Needless to say, we hear this quite a lot.

He told Tom yesterday, "You can never disturb me when I am doing my calculator constructions!"

He has also been experimenting with nonsense syllables. A couple of weeks ago, he got stuck on this one nonsense syllable that starts with "f" and rhymes with "duck." He just kept repeating it over and over again. It was clear that it didn't meant anything to him, he just liked the way it sounded. We had to tell him that some people don't like to hear that particular word to get him to stop.

One of his friends recently had a discussion with his mommy about what it means to be married. When his mommy asked him who he wanted to marry, he originally picked one of his little girlfriends. But at a recent playdate, he changed his mind and said that he wanted to marry Jack.

We asked Jack, "Do you want to marry Luke?"

Jack said, "No, I want to marry myself."

He has since told us that he wants Violet to be his wife, but he doesn't want to get married. Somehow, I think he's not quite understanding the concept.

Last week we were at a playdate, and one of the mommies was scolding her daughter for something. She ended her rebuke with, "Do you understand me?" And Jack, ever the little dickens, said, "I always understand my mommy!"

Of course, "understanding" is not the same as "obeying."

Sometimes, he'll hand me some piece of garbage that he wants me to throw away for him, and then tell me, "When are you going to say 'thank you'?"

He asked Tom yesterday, "Do airplanes poop?"

He's been singing a lot of songs from his current favorite CD. I love when he sings, "Miss Old Man, he plays thirty-two, he plays knick-knack on my dirty shoe!" Or "Mary has a yiddle wamb, yiddle wamb, yiddle wamb."

My favorite thing he tells me a lot though is, "I like you, Mommy. You're a very nice mommy. Violet likes you, too."