Language is powerful. Nothing reinforces that more than having children. Suddenly you’re watching what you say around them or how you say it. Aware that they’re taking in everything, and learning from you. Words can also dictate behavior. E learned a new word recently, and it’s completely changing how we spend our weekends.
The word? Outside.
As in, can we go outside? Right now? Please? Pretty please? How about now? Hey, let’s go outside! Right now!! Okay, he doesn’t have the language to say that exactly, but he does have big brown eyes that look up to us as he begs “Outside? Outside? Outside?” and then goes to stand by the door and scratches at it like our cat. “Out-siiiiiiide???”
Last weekend we spend hours outside. Hours. Walking around the yard. Up and down the driveway. Talking to the neighbors. Playing with friends. We even went to the playground/dogpark for a while. I can tell this is going to be a lot of our future, so Tom even ordered a gate for our porch so hopefully when he’s back at work and I have the kids by myself at night, E can get some outside time if I have to be inside with G for whatever reason. We’ll see if it’s a good compromise.
Because gosh is it heartbreaking to hear that “Outside? Outside?” when it’s not time to go outside and that’s all that he wants to do. Sometimes you disappoint your children, so when you can do something simple and easy to make them happy, I’m all for it. Luckily there are a lot of little things that E gets really excited about. Post-its. Cardboard boxes. Bananas.
For what seems like forever now, E has been obsessed with bananas. “Na-na-nas!” Just like “outside,” you can’t even say the word around him, because he’ll immediately expect to eat one. And I feel like there’s probably a limit on how many he should eat a day? Maybe? He definitely eats at least one haha. He loves them so much, we still give him bananas and whipped cream when we go out for ice cream and I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s getting the better deal.
So every time Tom goes grocery shopping, he makes sure to stock up. Usually E cheers when he sees them at the store - he knows what he likes! This week when Tom was unpacking the groceries, he started laughing. “WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY BANANAS?!” He swears that he only put one bunch in the cart. Only one bunch went on the conveyor belt. Only one bunch was paid for. But when he got home, there were two bunches in the bag.
We’re not sure how or why, but we blame E. Somehow he managed to magically make extra bananas appear! Which actually worked out for us, since later in the week a mild sickness took over the house, and that was all we wanted to eat. Luckily we didn’t feel like we were stealing them from the tiny human, since there were more than enough to go around. Win Win.
We’ll see if we end up with more magical bananas this week…
