Happy-Sad

It should come as no surprise to you all that Bittersweet is my favorite emotion.  Or as the Boy says it "HAPPYSAD!"

(Everything he says lately is said in ALL CAPS!  It's quite funny, especially at nap times and bed times when he's tired and wants to still be speaking in ALL CAPS! but doesn't quite have the energy for it, so that what he lacks in volume he makes up for in exclamation points.)

I wanted to take a moment to record here some of the things that he says and that we absolutely LOVE...it's partly for your entertainment, I am nothing if not conscientious of my audience, but also partly for the record.

Please observe:

So...he wouldn't say everything I wanted, but you get the general idea.

And yes, Helicopter is my current favorite word...it's half chicken sound, half helicopter--imagine BEG-OK-COPTER!  And now imagine that he pulls down every book he owns and goes in search of helicopters to show me a BEG-OK-COPTER!  And you have me almost at my happiest.

137 times a day we hear PEESE HEP!  Because he can't get up onto a chair or because he's up and can't get down.  Because he can't carry all of his cars AND his blanket at once.  Because he needs more water or a book read or a toy out of the closet or any number of things.  It's the ever so polite PEESE that cracks me up.

Everything from the surprising to the catastrophic gets an OH NOOOO!  And I mean everything.  The big crash at the end of Cars--OH NOOOO!  Drops a cookie on the floor--OH NOOOOO!  One of the cats is playing with a sparkly--OH NOOOO!  It's all shades of AWESOME.  Which, speaking of AWESOME--it's one of those words that just popped up out of nowhere.  Right along side of OKAY (which sounds more like AH-KAY!) 

(I guess what makes all of this so funny is that Chris and I are hearing the words we say all the time but in a totally different tone and context.  I'll be muttering to myself as I work through a To Do list and say "Right.  Okay.  What's next?"  And the Boy will be puttering along with his cars and his books and start up a chant of AH-KAY! AH-KAY! AH-KAY!  It cracks us up.)

We go to the library a lot here--there are several and they're BIG so when we go it's a windfall.  Last time I brought home about 20 Henry and Mudge books and 4 or 5 Thomas the Tank Engine books.  In one of them Percy the Engine crashes into a candy factory and gets covered in chocolate and it's his favorite part.  So he picks up the book and brings it to me chanting CHA-CA-LATE-OH NO!-YUCK!  It defies description.

Chris' favorite phrase of the Boy's is still PIECE O' PIE!  My mom is a divine pie maker and she's been keeping us in peach pie since we moved back and the Boy, I'm telling you, he can sniff sniff sniff it out and he will hunt you down and look up at you with his big brown eyes and smile and say, "PIECE O' PIE?!"  Until you give in and give it to him.

It's going so fast.  He's loosing all of this charming Beginner-Talk and sounding more and more like a proper English Speaking child.  I find myself wishing that I could push pause and keep him here for just a while longer.

I wish that I could put this part of him in my pocket and keep it with me always.  I wish that I was the kind of mom who could just enjoy it and then when it's gone let it go, but I fear that I'm not.  I enjoy it, I love it, I laugh, I hug, I tickle but then this tinge of a sting creeps in when I realize that I only have right now.  He will still grow up one day.  He will grow up and away and all of that is as it should be.  But it still makes me sad, for I am greedy.  I would wish that I could keep him forever just as he is.  But that's stasis, it's the unhealthiest of unhealthy states.  And so, while it makes me sad, I also want him to grow, to explore, to live.

Which means, I suppose, that I'm perpetually stuck between HAPPY and SAD.