Today Was a Good Day (Sung in the Vocal Stylings of Ice Cube)

There have been times in the last few months when I was moments away from listing my kids on eBay for the highest bidder (and I probably would have traded them for as little as a perfect vodka tonic), but since we returned from our trip to OK, I have to say that I am more in love with my children than I’ve ever been.  Once we got past the we-just-spent-two-weeks-with-grandparents adjustments, the last week or so has been smoooooooth sailing.  I mean, not every moment has been magical, but honestly for the most part, my life has been ideal in the Mama department.  

I made a vow to myself that this blog was NOT going to turn into a mommy blog (not that there’s anything wrong with mommy blogs--I follow several of them) because I really needed it to be about something other than my children on those days when my little angels have been less than stellar.  But today has been pretty extraordinary, so I need to send a mad shout-out to the Johnson boys.

The last time my mom visited, she saw Will pretending to smoke.  She asked him what he was doing, and he took a pretend puff off his sucker stick and said, “I’m smoking!”  When we tried to figure out where he picked it up, he said, “Cowboys smoke.”  WTH???  Upon further questioning, he told me, “Mom, I don’t really smoke.  I was just pretending.”  I started scouring the house for Marlboro ads (maybe on an issue of Rolling Stone?) but came up with nothing.  A couple of weeks later, I finally got Will to tell me where he learned about it.  He said it was from a Tom and Jerry episode called “Texas Tom” where Tom is a cowboy.  YES!  So glad to know it’s not because his friends at school are passing him Marlboros on the monkey bars.

Last year, Will feel in love with a little girl named Regan from his K3 class.  If you ask him what Regan is like, he’ll tell you “she’s tiny and just exactly like Tinkerbell.”  And it’s kind of true.  Unfortunately, Will and Regan both switched schools for K4 and no longer get to see each other as often (we still have park play dates occasionally).  His love for her was so intense for so long (they had already decided they would get married and buy a house, and his room would be Cars-themed, and her room would be butterfly-themed) that I was SHOCKED when he came home this week and told me he was going to marry Becca (a new little blonde from his K4 class who wears a pink beret every day).  I was even more SHOCKED when he told me the next day that he was going to marry Bella (a red head with giant brown eyes and the teeniest little voice you’ve ever heard).  Regan?  Becca?  Bella?  It’s like I’ve got my own little 4-year-old version of The Bachelor over here.

Ben’s vocabulary is still at that stage where you have to listen really carefully to understand exactly what he’s saying.  HOWEVER (and this is a fact, NOT an opinion), everything he says is so stinkin’ cute you want to bite him (think the scene in Where the Wild Things Are when she says, “I’ll eat you up I love you so” and then literally consumes him...just thinking about it makes me cry).  Anyway, here are some of my favorites (with English translation):

1: “cuemeese”: Excuse me.  He says this all the time to get my attention, even when I’m not in a conversation or busy doing something else.  It’s kind of his verbal tick.

2: “piderman”: Spiderman.  I probably didn’t need to translate that one, but seriously.  Any word that starts with s followed by another consonant comes out without the s.  For example, he loves to read “Pot Goes to Cool.”

3: “rotit shit”: Rocket ship. We have a lot of space jammies and shirts in this house for whatever reason, so this one comes up A LOT.  He also calls chocolate “shot shit,” which comes up even more frequently around here.

4: “maybe cuse?”: May I be excused?  This is his newest phrase, and sometimes I say, “What?” a couple of times after he asks just to hear him say it again.

So, now it’s in writing, so tomorrow when Will is smacking Ben in the face with a light saber and Ben is dumping crushed graham crackers on the living room floor, I can open up my blog and remind myself that I’m the luckiest girl in the world.