reductio ad absurdum

I hate to keep writing about how big our little boy is growing, so from this point on I promise to suspend any comments that I might have concerning his fantastic size. Unless, of course, he starts to shrink.


For now there are enough subjects regarding Ben’s personality to discuss for weeks upon weeks, which coincidentally will probably be the next time I get around to posting in this blog. Of course since I just made that statement, Murphy’s cute little law has it that I will instead find myself posting here every day. Hrmph. Sometimes you win, sometimes you waste a lot of time at work writing a blog about your kid.

Speaking of work. . . the child is entering a new phase in his pursuit of a greater vocabulary, and it sure doesn’t make mommy and daddy’s vocal lifestyle any easier. Suddenly, without warning of any kind, Ben is really getting into repeating things. Now, he’s been repeating things for months, but it used to be that we had to ask him.

“Benjamin, can you say: boo-ya?”

“Ah-Boo!”

“Good! Can you say: daddy?”

“Da-deeee! Ga ah-mung men!”

But now he repeats the last word of every sentence you speak. It usually sounds something like an Abbott and Costello routine, or a really bad TV sitcom:

“Hey Ben, let’s go upstairs and wake up mommy.”

“Ma-mee?”

“Yes, mommy. Let’s go wake her up. She’s had enough rest.”

“Esst?”

“Rest. Sleep. You know, night-night.”

“Neye-neye?”

“No, buddy, not for you. For mommy. She needs to wake up from her night-night.”

“Neye-neye.” [he lays down on the floor and feigns snoring]

“Okay, big guy. C’mon, let’s get up now.”

“Now.”

“Yes now. Let’s go get mommy. She needs to make us some dinner. I’m hungry.”

“Uh-gee.”

“You’re hungry too? Okay, let’s get mommy’s lazy butt out of bed so she can make us some dinner.”

“Uh-gee.”

“Right. I know, I know. Me too, buddy. C’mon, let’s go wake up mommy.”

“Ma-mee!”

“Yes. . . mommy. Let’s go already. Mommy’s slept too much.”

“Muh-sh”.

[frustrated] “Hey, Ben – can you say ‘magnetohydrodynamic’?”



[long pause]



“Ma-mee!”



For the record, I believe I can honestly say that it was Anna who first broke the most essential of those rules that your friends pass on to you when your kid gets to be about 18 months old, and that is: watch your f*cking mouth! This morning our innocent little creature uttered his first semi-obscenity - “jerk”. And it was his mother, not his father, who planted it in his pliable little mind. I just hope Anna remembers that moment when we’re getting lectured in the principals office about our son calling his 3rd-grade teacher a dirty whore (you would never believe how much Anna throws that term around).

I’m sure I’ll have plenty of things to add to his slum-vocabulary over the next several years; I’m far from innocent. But I wasn’t the first.


In an unrelated story, several weeks ago The Ben was naming all the farm animals in a book of his, and when we got to the picture of a pig, he emphatically yelled “mama!” Now, something tells me the blush in Anna’s cheeks wasn’t exactly a symptom of her inherent bashfulness, and she took the erroneous insult with surprising poise (she ripped the book into seventeen pieces). In his defense, the book was actually attempting to demonstrate the relationship between various different farm animals and their mothers, so the pig was indeed being portrayed as a “mama” pig.

Ben more than made up for his indiscretion a week or two later when I held up the latest edition of the Victoria’s Secret catalog (God bless Victoria’s Secret), pointed to the model on the cover and asked, “Ben, who’s that?”

“Ma-mee!”

Good dog.