Lincoln Lately

First of all, isn’t technology great?  I’m blogging at around 40,000 feet over the middle of the United States somewhere between TN and CA.  Yes, CA.  The clampets are headed out west and that’s a whole other blog in itself.  Probably 2. 

Lincoln is no less of a pistol than the day he was born.  I wish I could say he cries less but instead, I at least know what he’s crying about now.  He, like his brother, is very articulate for a 3 year old.  He pretty much never stops talking.  Sometimes whining but always a motor mouth.  Some of the things he’s said lately have really made us laugh.  All things I never want to forget so they are provided here for my memory and your reading pleasure.

While spending some time with my parents, he had a little runny nose.  He kept asking my mom for a tennis shoe.  She asked him why he needed shoes, he was already wearing some.  He bluntly said  “to wipe my NOSE!”  I believe he was asking for a tissue.

He and Jackson have been pretending lately and he’s claiming he’s a “vampirate.”  Without asking, I assumed this was a cross between a vampire and a pirate. 

In the car recently, I asked “Lincoln, are you a little boy or a big boy?”  He answered me, “I’m NOT, I’m a good boy!”  Sure.  Matter of opinion.

We spend a lot of time at Y play and when I mentioned him going there to play with his friends, he told me “they are not my friends, they are KIDS.”  Well, I wonder what in the world he thinks he is?

Just to prove the point of how serious my dad is about church attendance, Lincoln regularly gets dressed in the morning and pretends to “go to church with Paw Paw.”  It’s the cutest thing, until I check on him and he’s rounded the neighborhood corner.

I go upstairs to shower and a few minutes later I yell down and ask Lincoln what he’s doing.  He answers, “I’m watching ‘wifetimes’.”  I translate this to he’s watching Lifetime.  I’m not sure why but I don’t put it past him so I go downstairs to check and make sure he wasn’t getting big ideas from “The hand that rocks the cradle” or some other classy lifetime movie.  I soon discover he’s watching “Little Einsteins” and not “wifetimes” or lifetime after all. 

We pass by a driving range that we pass very frequently and Lincoln asks “Mom, are they playin’ boss?”  Well, kinda.  I laughed.  No Lincoln, they are playing GOLF!

Leaving church one Sunday, I get goosebumps on my arms and Lincoln rubs my arm and says, “Mom, you have sprinkles!”

Jackson recently lost his first tooth.  It was not on my accord.  I was out and they were under the care or their father.  Jackson convinced Jason that EVERYONE in his class had already lost a tooth (not true) except him.  So they took the slightly loose tooth and attempted pulling it with a variety of methods.  The tooth was finally extracted using fishing pliers.  Yes, that’s right, fishing pliers.  After a happy visit from the tooth fairy, loosing teeth was all the buzz in our house.  I was getting ready in the bathroom one day when Lincoln begins to use my tweezers in his mouth.  I asked him what he was doing and he tells me “I’m tryin’ to get my teeth out!” 

Hold your judgments, I’m raising BOYS.  Dirty, nasty, raw, rough BOYS.  Playing with guns is just in their nature, along with aggravating each other pure crazy.  Besides, their daddy was in the army and deployed for years at a time.  He was “off shooting bad guys” so it’s kinda hard to tell them not to be like their role model.  Anyway, Lincoln is obsessed with his guns.  He has a fancy pistol that he wakes up looking for (after “breakpast”, of course).  While I was catching up on email and nursing my extra large cup of coffee Lincoln comes up and shoots me.  I pretend not to notice so he does it again.  Again, I choose to not notice when he starts whining, “Mom, please die Mom!  You neber Die!”

Wow, I didn’t expect to hear that from my 2 year old.  So out of obligation, I have a delayed reaction to the final shot and fall to the ground clutching my chest for dramatic effect.  It was well received.  He felt accomplished.  He then helped me up off the floor, handed me his gun and said, “Please shoot me, Mom.”  How do you say no to that?  And the whole dramatic scene replayed over and over again.

A recent bath held a little comic relief when he asked me for the “sand poop”.  Excuse me?  You want what?  “Mom, I weally need the sand poop.”  Ohoooooooo, you need the shampoo?!

The good news is Jackson and Lincoln can both get up and go downstairs alone and turn on the TV in the morning. We have removed the side from Lincoln’s crib since he was just climbing over everyday anyway.  The bad news is you never know what you’re going to walk down to when it’s just Lincoln.  I recently heard him up talking one morning.  I went downstairs to see what he could be talking about and to whom.  I arrive downstairs to find him naked(?) and singing to our dog Roxy.  I didn’t catch the song because Roxy bolted when she saw me.  She may have been slightly disturbed by the naked serenade as well. 

I recently started a load of clothes only to realize too late that there was a stow away motorcycle in the wash.  It’s not every day you get to see a toy motorcycle do tricks in your sudsy laundry.  I wanted to get a pic of it but I was too busy checking the oven for foreign objects.

Lincoln has began storytelling.  He loves to tell you a story.

 He’ll say “Let me tell you a story.”

He starts out low and dramatic…

-One day, there was a Monster upstairs and I took my gun (pause)

And I  just KILL it! (yelling)

He’s got the dialect down for sure.  Every story he tells has the same plot.  Occasionally there are different locations (such as downstairs) or different characters (such as a ghost) or different weapons but every time it’s the same out come. 

Another day, another brotherly fight.  Jackson is aggravating Lincoln about something in the car and I tell Jackson “Don’t argue with him, he’s little.” to which Lincoln replies “I’m NOT wittle, I’m just….small.”  Seriously, where does he come up with this stuff.

Nashville has a newspaper, The Contributor, that is for distribution sold by formerly homeless individuals to give them a better chance at living on their own.  It’s like a shared business where they buy the papers and sell them for a higher amount.  It’s a great idea and we have been supporting it after Jason did a research paper on it for school.  Our local guy stands at our corner and sells most days of the week for hours a day.  He writes thank you on the bottom of each of our papers and signs his name.  His name is Luther.  At Christmas, Luther wears a Rudolph nose, at Easter, he wears bunny ears.  He’s entertaining to the kids and they LOVE to hand him the dollar we give him for the paper.  They always yell “LUTHER” when they see him and we pass by.  Now, whenever Jackson is not with us, Lincoln has picked up and started yelling “LUFER!” to our friendly neighborhood Contributor distributor. 

Lincoln has become more than a little obsessed with “gumball money.”  He’ll take every quarter you own and claim it as his “gumball money”.  The things he will do for gumball money might surprise you.  He’ll obey orders, hold his tongue or act appropriately in a store, all for the hope of gumball money.  I’ll be honest, it’s the best 25 cents I spend.  I’m just hoping he doesn’t catch on soon and up the ante. 

Watching TV again ( he doesn’t just do it all the time!) I walked by and asked Lincoln what he was watching.  He told me he was watching “the muffins.”  I thought it was cute.  We had borrowed “The Muppets” from friends and he didn’t know any difference. 

This boy bounces out of bed and immediately demands to put his clothes on.  He has some favorite outfits too and he strongly prefers them.  He took one set out of dirty clothes recently and came to the top of the stairs naked and demanded to wear them.  I told him they were dirty and we couldn’t wear them today.  He said (yelled) “Well….you need to take them to the DRY CLEANERS then.” 

So, what exactly does he know about the dry cleaners? 

And just a couple of Jacksonisms to note:

He recently made a friend at the pool and I asked him “What was your friends name?”  He said, “I dunno, we just called each other Dude!”  Well, I guess that works too.

On the subject of loosing teeth, he tells me Mr. Eddie doesn’t have any teeth.  I ask who Mr. Eddie is and he tells me he’s the man that cleans the school.  I was going to teach a life lesson by asking “Why do you think Mr. Eddie doesn’t have his teeth?”  He answers, “He probably pulled all of them out because he wanted more money from the tooth fairy!”  I’m laughing but I want to see where this is going so I ask why he needed so much money that he pulled his teeth out.  He told me, “To buy our school, Mom!” 

So there you have it.