Really?

"Really, Pati? Another entry about how wonderful your kids are? Or let me guess, one of them met a certain milestone? Maybe they had another sweet sibling moment together? What is it this time, you show off? Get some new material, already"!

That's what I'm sure my followers are thinking.....and I don't blame them. But I didn't title the blog The Perfect Pair of Boots for nothing. And I really, really have to share this moment.

J just got an invite to the birthday party of a little girl in his class. This is the same little girl that I wrote about at the start of the school year that he was obsessed with; the same little girl who dictated when he could and couldn't sit on the bus with her. As I figured, it didn't last long. I had several conversations with him about how awesome he was, how he had other friends and didn't always have to play with O nor did he always have to sit by her on the bus. I ran into her mom a couple of months later and she mentioned that two kiddos were getting along just fine; that O had asked J to sit on the bus with her and he respectfully declined.

They've since become good buddies. At his birthday celebration at school the kids were asked to say things to J about what they thought of him...we heard silly, good friend, smart, and then O said that she loved him very much. Last Friday we went to Pizza and Bingo Night at the school. The two of them had got on nicely and a good time was had by all.

Fast forward to this afternoon after receiving the Evite. I mentioned to him that he was invited and that it was the same day that Abuelita (my mom) was flying into Portland but that we may be able to make it back in time for the party if he really wanted to go. He said that he did want to go and asked if Abuelita was going to go too. I said probably because M didn't know Abuelita very well and would probably put up a fight about staying with her to which he said, "But O doesn't know Abuelita at all!" I continued by saying that it would probably be okay but that I would call O's mommy and see if it was okay.

He then said, "Okay. And if she says no then we don't have to go either."

Really? This is coming from a child who lives for birthday parties and all that goes with them! Saying something like "and if she says no then she can stay here and wait for us," is more along the lines of what I thought he'd say.

Am I really raising such a considerate child?

Well, no. Not always. There are days that he greatly lacks in that department which makes today's incident all that more touching. Really.

Man vs. Food

Ah-Tai and Joe-Boo are some of the newest words that M's uses in her ongoing quest to communicate with the world, but there's one word in her vocabulary that stands out above the rest: Huh-Uh. Yes, it's an actual word and the dictionary defines it as an utterance used to indicate negation.

Right after mastering the standard Mama, Dada, and Jay-Je, Huh-Uh quickly became a part of her normal lexicon. No one made a consorted effort to teach her this but I'm sure there was no shortage of examples for the usage around our house. I would bet it tops the list of offenders in the universal language of parenting.

It started out innocently enough a few months ago. She and J were hanging out and he asked her if she liked him to which she quickly responds, Huh-Uh while shaking her head no. She caught us completely off guard so we laughed and he asked again, same response. And so it went for a few days. He badgered her with the same question over and over. He changed the noun from me to Mommy to Daddy, but her response didn't.

He finally concluded that she really didn't know what she was saying and set out to prove his theory. Because all of the previous inquiries were subjective or mood-derived, the Million Dollar Question was in order:

J: Is your name Mia?
M: Huh-Uh (with shaking of the head.)

Bingo....he just knew he was onto something!

In the last couple of weeks she's picked up the opposite and started saying Uh-Huh coupled with the nodding of the head. The contrast is evident. The Huh-Uhs come almost as a grunt and the shaking is fast and furious. With the Uh-Huhs the sound is sweeter and the nodding slower. It would certainly seem to the casual observer that she's got this whole thing down to a science.

Now when asked about her "like" for us there are days that we get the sweet, gentle Uh-Huh but the scales continue to tip towards the other on most days.

When asked if she likes her food, the answer is always in the affirmative...J is not convinced that she can possibly like her food more than her family but hasn't devised any new experiments so far to get to the bottom of it.

For now we are collectively resigned to the fact that in the ongoing battle for M's affection, food comes out victorious.

Apparently the old route going directly from stomach to the heart is no longer gender biased.