"Actually, Ben's Hilarious"

The things my kid says Crack Me Up. For example, he just walked toward me with his baseball mitt on anouncing "I put my football mit on." Just a sample.

Yesterday after Ben woke up from his nap I went outside to grab the mail. Ben was half way down the stairs when he spotted the package from Grandma Anita just outside the front door. He picked up his pace shouting, "I got presents!"

As I unloaded the box, he spotted Diesel. Diesel is an evil engine from Thomas. Ben has been asking for this engine for a while now. I have not been able to find him here, so Ben asked Grandma to buy him.

He screamed, "It's Diesel Mom!" a dozen times. "Open Diesel, Moooom!" Until he noticed there were more present in the package, wrapped in Backyardigan's paper. Oh Lord. Slick, Grandma!

"I got birthday presents!" "No Ben, these are Hunter's birthday presents. It's Hunter's Birthday soon." Then, he says to me, without missing a beat, "Actually, these are Ben's presents." No shit, Ben said this. Smart ass. I laughed so hard. Funny how you never know the things you say until a 2 year old repeats them to you. Theo joked last night that his 2-year-old uses words like "actually" better than he does.

Diesel has since explored the sandbox, the garden, and his instruction paper even went to Menard's with us last night. This morning, as Ben ate breakfast, Diesel sat beside him. Ben ate cold cereal with milk. He asked to have a napkin, which he keeps in his lap and uses to wipe the dribbles on the table from his spoon. What 2-year-old boy does that?

So, we're eating breakfast, and I asked Theo to do something like change a diaper, or some other less than desirable task. He responded, "I hate my life." Theo uses this phrase often as a joke. If Theo had a blog, it'd be called, "I hate my life." Theo and I have a difference of opinion on the word "hate." I don't want to the kids to pick it up and start using it. Hate is a strong word, and I reserve the use of it for more serious discussion. I said to Theo, "Don't use that word," to which Ben adds: "You shouldn't say that around the kid's daddy." Swear to Jesus my kid said this. Then he whispered. "Daddy don't say F%$#." Yup. How funny is that?

Right now, Ben's reading himself a book, sitting on the coffee table. "Busy tractor's working." Page turn. "Busy tractor's lifting things." Page turn. "Busy tractor's working busy cutting things." Page turn. "Busy tractor's working making things flat."

Perhaps the most thrilling thing Ben has done this week? Counted to 20. Yeah. He had never counted to 4 outloud before and suddenly he's counting to 20? What the Eff? I was working on container on the patio. I had deeply engrosed in deciding what plants to put where. Ben was playing with the empty container and a paper bag. I was NOT paying attention to him. I tuned in for a milisecond to hear him saying "11, 12." Okay, I'm tuned in now... still as a statue so as not to interupt his thought, or lead him on to my watching him. "13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19." No way! A praised him, and a few minutes later I asked him to do it again. He did. When dad got home he filled in the blanks and counted again.

I may have shared some of these already, but he also says fun and random things like:

"I have an idea." When he's plotting what to play with next.

"I want something, mom." When he's hungry.

He calls snowflakes, "snow-man-flakes."

He calls cheddar cheese, "school-bus cheese." Duh, it's the same color.

We may have dodged the dreaded, "Why?" phase each toddler goes through, but instead, he constantly asks, "What's that mom?"

In the morning when Dad leaves for work he says, "Don't work really hard, Dad. Work really soft."

He always says, "Don't touch me, Hunter."

We've been tying to teach him about where Grandma lives. We tried to convince him she lives at Disneyland, but he wasn't gullible. Instead, when asked where Grandma lives he says, "with Uncle Jason." He knows they live in "California." Now, he repeatedly asks to "go to California" when we leave the house.

This morning he found one of Hunter's toys, and said, "It's too loud for Hunter. I turn it down."

He calls granola bars, "own bars" as in, "Do you want you're own bar, too?"

"I want berry lot of gold cheese," means "I want a very lot of grilled cheese."

He just made a Thomas track on the floor in the living room, and said, "It's a track for mommy and daddy."

And he's still not potty-trained.

More to come.... I'm sure.