Fingers and Noses

Ben: Why don't we put our fingers in our noses? Our noses have places for our fingers to go in. See? I'm putting my finger in this hole.

Mindy: [speechless with laughter]

That's so sad, Dad!

I was working on my cell phone trying to get the battery back while I was sitting at the lunch table with Ben.

The antenna broke off and I told Ben that my phone was broken.

"That's so sad," he sympathized. "Sometime you'll have to go to the phone store and get a phone that just the right size for daddies."

Cucumber or Pickle

Ben is a big Veggie tales fan by now and as most of you probably know, Larry the Cucumber is one of the main characters. At different times in the shows, Larry is called a pickle and he takes great offense at that. I didn't realize how much this concept had sunk in for Benjamin until a couple days ago.

Ben received some play food for Christmas and it includes lots of vegetebles, including a cucumber. When Ben and I were playing one time I said something about the cucumber and he told me it wasn't a cucumber, it was a pickle.

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Because cucumbers have eyes and pickles don't."

Needless to say I was speechless.

I Love You *What*?

When Mindy and I talk on the phone, I often end the conversation by saying "I love you oodles." And naturally, she responds with "I love you oodles too."

Well, Ben being in that mimic stage has apparently picked this up and yesterday he had a pretend phone call. The call was with the little girl across the street who's about a year younger than him. Nothing unusual about that until it ended and Ben said "I love you noodles too. Bye"

Working all the Angles

So Ben is definitely starting to think a lot more creatively about problems these days. While we were at Mindy's folks, Ben had done something that made the construction truck unavailable. This truck is a ride on toy that has lots of buttons and is an endless source of entertainment to Ben when we're at Grandma and Grandpa's, but sadly he had misused it. So it wasn't available for the rest of the day.

A little while after said incident, Ben came to me and said, "Dad, I need to go to the grocery store... It's a long way away, so I can't walk..."

"Very interesting," I said, not sure where this was going, but having a hunch. "Maybe you should see if you can get a ride from someone."

"I think I need to use my truck, Dad," he said with such seriousness, that it was all I could do to not crack up on the spot.

"It's really sad that it's not available, huh? I guess you'll have to wait or see if someone will give you a ride."

"Ok," he said sadly. And that was the end of it for awhile.

Later that evening, I came into the kitchen to hear Ben talking to his Grandma.

"I need to go to the store by myself," he said, "and it's a long way away, so I can't walk. I need my truck since it's so far away."

So now he'd figured out this new argument as to why he couldn't get a ride with someone else. He needed to go by himself. It's so exciting to see him reasoning things out and making his case for what he wants, but it scares the crud out of me for what the teen years will be like... At least I have a few years to prepare.