Are You Stinking Me?

Things have been so mellow around here, I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe or something. Tate has been so...human. He hasn't banged his head or tried to pull someone's ear off in forever. No shrieks of "LISTEN TO ME, MOM!" or "NO, OK?? NO! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?". Now it's all "Oh, Norey, did you get hurt? Let me kiss it." or "Mommy, I just love you." or "I can't go poopy on the potty. My booty has no poo in it." Ok, the last one is kind of random but he said it, and it was funny. Maybe because it was said in the same tone of voice that one would use when saying "Oh, me, look at the lovely weather outside."

He still gets kinda feisty in the car though. We were sitting at a red light for the big 2.1 seconds and I heard a big huff and a "Oh my gosh, are you STINKING me??" I'm assuming the little road rager meant to say "kidding" instead of "stinking", but the point came across very well. Nora has added to the road-rage repertoire by yelling "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of her little lungs. So her vocabulary currently consists of "Hi", "Dada", and "GOOOOOOOOOO." Although I think she's starting to pick up my irritation with Bob's barking at people or dogs or leaves or ants, because when he barks, I'll oftentimes hear a little "BA!" floating out of the front room in a tiny little voice. "BA!!!!" I like to teach my kids really useful stuff. Like how to yell at old people in cars and canines.

Tate is still a singing fool. He sings all the time. Nonstop. There is always some little ditty wafting through the house. Most of the time it's the ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle or Wheels on the Bus, but he's also proficient at making up his own little ditties. The other day I heard "Bob the Builder Loves HuHot", "Ababala Chocolate Milk", and my personal fave "Schmooke Luka Dee". They're always to the tune of an existing song, he just becomes Alan Menken in a 3-year-old form and comes up with completely new, random, usually nonsensical words. And usually while he's tootling about wipers on the bus going "skish skish skish" or asking how to get to "Sefase Street" or trilling about his friends Luke and Emilie going to the park with sticks and Katie Couric, you'll see his own personal little number-one fan behind him with her arms in the air swaying back and forth with a look of rapture on her face. You kind of expect to see a lighter in one hand and a plastic cup half-full of warm, flat beer in the other.

So things have been nice around here. Other people have started to notice Tate's change in general demeanor too, so I really think I'm just not fooling myself here. My friend was with us at the park the other day, and Tate was being all charming and non-fiendish and she just looked at him and said "Tate, what's with all the...niceness lately??". The times, they are a'changing. It's the dawn of a new era.

Maybe.