Focusing on Alec

Alec and I are enjoying a quiet morning at home today. My quiet mornings are soon to be extinct. Only one more week until my academic quarter gets going and then my mornings will be spent in the classroom, focusing on theme, audience, grammar, perspective. With all of that in mind, I wanted to devote this morning to my little guy, so here we go! I'm going to focus on Alec today in my blog. Next time I'll try to get Zach to sit still for an "interview."

Alec is my little entertainer. Frustrating at times, certainly. But also very endearing, clever, and just plain ol' funny.

We're in the living room and he's jumping from the ottoman to the sofa. "Stop jumping on the furniture," I say for the bazillionth time this morning. His answer?

"Heaven is up in da sky and ya have to hop on clouds to git to God."

So, what do you say to that? I open my mouth to comment but he's not finished.

"I like to hop. Watch me hop, Mommy. I'm a good hopper." And then, lo and behold, the little stinker is hopping from ottoman to sofa...sofa to ottoman. And I'm just laughing because he's such a manipulator. He had me focused on the hopping on clouds imagery and then he snuck in a forbidden fruit. Little traitor.

So I whisk him off of the sofa and tickle him and he giggles and that laugh is just so incredibly precious and I can actually picture him giggling and hopping from cloud to cloud. Breathless he says, "You sure are a good tickler, Mommy." And I melt, of course. Because at this moment I can't think of anything more righteous, any higher aspiration, than being the best tickler I can be.

Then he's up and bouncing around again, but this time it's for a different reason.

"I need to go potty, Mommy." So I take him and get him situated and then leave him to his business with his favorite book (this week), "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom." From the bathroom he calls out, "Mommy! I'm done... but how come there are green octobabusses on the shower? How come they're smiling? Mommy? Are you coming? Actually, Mommy, I'm not done. Don't come yet." Then I hear singing. He's singing the alphabet song but for some reason he never can remember "T-U-V" so he just goes straight from "Q-R-S" to "W-X-Y AND ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!" I'm not sure why those other letters always get left out, but I bet he would have a reason if I asked him.

And now he's done again so we take care of that business and I tell him to wash his hands. He doesn't like to wash his hands. I recently discovered a trick, though. He loves to play with little plastic toys in the sink. And he especially loves to wash little plastic toys with soap and water in the sink. So, guess what he's doing right now? He's playing with three little ninja guys and those dudes are getting bathed like nobody's business. There also seems to be an inordinate amount of dying and sneaking going on. "Blue ninja is sneaking on yellow ninja and then he DIED! Oh noooooo. No wait, he didn't died. He's kicking now!" And there are noises that only little boys are able to make. Kicking and punching and ooof type noises. I feel the need to distract him.

I call out, "Alec, what's your favorite animal?"

He calls out, "My favorite animals are kitties! Watch this Mommy, I'm a kitty." And now he's meowing while playing with the ninjas in the sink. The funny thing about the "watch me" comment is that he says that when he wants me to listen to him. He hasn't actually fully conquered the difference between listening and watching.

And now here he comes. He's fairly soaked from playing and he's carrying a little orange kitten in what looks to be a very uncomfortable position. Oliver the kitty looks at me pleadingly and I rescue him from those wet clutches of three year old love. And now Oliver shakes his paws and his head and water flies everywhere and I wonder if more than ninjas got a bath in the sink?

Certainly wouldn't surprise me. Not much surprises me anymore. At least, not when Alec is involved! My sweet, funny, adventuresome, charming little stinkeroo.