Kids. They Kill Me.

Thought about this after I posted some video of D.J. the other day: kids are way smarter than we adults might think.

D.J. is now old enough to concentrate for more than two or three minutes at a time, count (a little), tease people and do just the most embarrassing things at the worst possible moments in time. The one thing that bothers me is that he is just too smart about the wrong things.

If one of us adults starts to count, "One...," he says, "Tewwww." Kills me every time. (We haven't gotten him to say "Three" yet, but he will try to hold up that many fingers.) The other day, his mom wanted to dress him and he didn't want to be dressed. When she reached over to grab his arm, he snatched away and told her, very clearly, to "Go 'way!" This is a kid who can't say "Three"?

My sister gets upset whenever she sees him doing something like dancing along with Sid the Science Kid (or whoever that little purple guy is). She feels like, if he can dance and sing along with a TV show, he should be able to get out the first couple words of The Lord's Prayer. (She's working on teaching him the beginner's prayer of  "Now I lay me down to sleep". He's not co-operating.)

I may have already told how D.J. responds when I get to the house and stomp my feet on the floor (he stomps his, screams and comes flying to leap into my arms), but I'm kind of ashamed to say that his parents think I'm teaching him to be loud and unruly. Okay, so I am doing just that, but what the hell else are aunties for?

So far, my favorite thing about D.J. is that he is sweet. If he loves you, he can wrap his arms around you and make the sun shine on a cloudy day (and did I just steal a line from The Temptations???). Even though he can't yet say my name right, I don't really mind because I love the way he screws it up. "Tewwy." Yeah. Isn't that just the sweetest thing in the world?

I said that he's sweet because he is, but he has not one ounce of empathy in his little Saggitarian heart yet. I tried the old fake cry gimmick to see what he would do. What he did was just about fall over yawning.

No special reason for this post, except that I swore to myself that I would post something at least once a week. When there's nothing else interesting, I will always have D.J.

Peace
--Free