Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Lexicon X

My first born son Xander talks quite a bit and is generally very intelligible for someone his age (he's two and a half).

Every now and then though, he hits upon a phrase or word that he uses to represent something that has nothing at all to do with what he is actually talking about or he just says the same phrases constantly for various reasons.

This blog entry is dedicated to these groups of phrases.

The other night, after we had put the kids to bed, I was laying on the couch waiting for my wife to come join me to watch some TV. She was walking around the house taking care of a few things and I was laying there half covered up by a blanket. As she walked by I said to her:

"Cover me up bigger!"

She turned to me with a look in her eye that made me think that if I had said this to her while she was closer to me I might have received a solid punch to my face.

Xander will often say one of these phrases: "Cover me up bigger Mommy!"; "Cover me up bigger my neck, Daddy!"; "Cover me up bigger my teeth, Mommy!" and so on, ad nauseam. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Just cover him up then." Yes, yes you poor fool.

We do cover him up, to the various degrees he asks (arms, neck, teeth) and it matters not. He will still ask you to "Cover [him] up bigger" no matter how much you excel at covering him up. We've come to the conclusion that the words themselves don't actually mean much to Xander. Instead, he just wants you to continuously cover him up, pretty much until he falls sleep; which, FYI, is never gonna happen while you are in the room with him. Good luck with that though.

Xander knows how to push people's buttons too. He's actually nowhere near as accomplished at this endeavor as his little brother Lucas is though, but he's a quick study. Throughout the day he'll often do things that he knows he's not supposed to do (Empty out his brother's milk bottle all over the floor, Body Slam his brother, have an "accident" in his pants/all over the floor, etc.) and then he'll add insult to injury by asking his Mother this simple question:

"Is it funny, Mommy?"

Let me tell you, I've seen Vanina's face when these things happen and I can testify that it most certainly is not funny.

When Xander wakes up in the morning there are two things he invariably says:

"Good Morning Daddy" immediately followed by "Please Chocolate bread."

If I don't produce Nutella covered bread quickly enough for his liking it turns into "Pleeeeeeaaasseeee Chocolate Bread" and then if I'm still too slow it switches to "Chocolate bread Pleeeeeeeaaaaseee" just for variety.

I'm a fairly good whistler and I am practiced enough to even whistle while breathing both in and out so I can continue to whistle for quite some time uninterrupted. I also love music and sometimes I will whistle along to the music.

Xander has very keen ears. He can often hear things before we do and points them out, usually telling us what the noise is (i.e. if he hears a plane overhead: "Daddy, there's an airplane, do you hear it?"). However, if I start whistling, even if he is sitting on my lap, he will look around confused and say "What's that noise?" We've told him it's whistling, but it doesn't matter, if I start whistling he starts looking around all confused and asks "What's that noise?" Other whistle sounds, except train whistles (as he's something of a resident expert on trains in our house), produce the same confusion. He's like Pavlov's dogs, except instead of salivating, he gets confused.

A nice family that goes to our church gave us a Thomas the Train train-track set that came with a little Thomas the Train toy train that runs around the track on battery power. Well, we had the track up for a while, but it was huge and took up half the floor space in his room so I eventually took it down again, but he kept the toy Thomas train out to play with sans track. He calls it his "Little Thomas" and it must indeed be very little because he loses it like every two hours. When he does lose it this is all we hear: "Where's my little Thomas?" as he wanders around the whole house poking his little head into every nook and cranny he can find. As if we let him make a habit of playing with his toy trains in my clothes closet.

Here is a listing of other random stuff he says, most of them have stories to go along with them but this post will get way too long if I keep writing them:

When he wants to point out something he thinks you are missing: "Did you see that, mommy?"

Whenever we open the front door: "Is Jojo coming over?" (Jojo is his cousin, he's obsessed with Jojo).

"Lucas is a baby" either preceded or followed by the question "Is Lucas a baby?" Occasionally he'll include the epithet "Lucas is a funny baby."

Before Naps: "I'm not tired" followed by "I need to watch my show."

Sometimes even Xander runs out of energy and when that happens and he wants to not have to chase you down he'll say the following to you: "Come here. I have some important news for you."

And lastly, as you may or may not know my wife Vanina is pregnant with our third child, a baby girl. Xander is utterly fascinated by Nina's growing belly. He often wants to see her belly saying "Can I see your belly?" She usually does show him her belly, and he rewards her by saying the following:

"Your belly is so big!"

Ah yes, that's my son, he really knows how to woo the ladies.