Home Alone

Bill was in Phoenix for 3 days. On the first two days, my aunt came to watch Kai while I was at work. I was hoping to have a play date but everyone's sick (including Kai), so it was just Mommy and Kai all day yesterday. It's been a while since we spent the entire day alone, and we were such rebels! We threw routines and "the schedule" out the window and had a blast.

I'll use the morning as an example.

First off, we slept in. I don't mean waking up 20 minutes or half an hour later than usual. Try TWO HOURS, and the "baby" woke up before the mom!! I woke up to Kai saying "Hhhhhiiiiiii", his nose inches away from mine. Normally I wouldn't care how close his face is to mine, but this kid's been sick. There was a HUGE blob of green snot bubbling in and out of his right nostril. Wasn't something anyone would want to wake up to.

Cleaned his face. Changed his diaper. Then Kai patted the pillow twice and said, "Nai down!"

Whaaaaaat? Aren't you only 18 months old? Are you supposed to be using verb phrases already? And what's with the tone and gesture? Who taught you to pat the pillow?

But he was simply too cute to say no to, so I climbed back into bed. Kai wiggled around to get in some kind of "position". "Nuggle!" he said happily as he settled in with my left arm wrapped sound him.

So we snuggled in bed for another 20 minutes. We spent half the time playing and counting with our fingers and toes. The other half... the boy insisted that I should smell his toes by pushing his little toes into my face! When I turned my face away, he giggled like this was the funniest thing ever!! Such a boy thing to do, and I bet Bill would've giggled with him.

It was after 10 when we finally dragged ourselves to the kitchen. Mom had coffee; Kai had soy milk. Then we shared a bowl of apple cinnamon hot cereal AT THE TABLE. Yup! No high chair. I was too lazy to deal with the possible kicking-and-screaming as I put him in his high chair, so he sat in a chair by himself. And he did such a great job! He had hot cereal all by himself using his green plastic spoon. The usual breakfast time for both of us is no later than 9. We were so hungry that I didn't do much feeding and he didn't waste time playing. Every spoonful went straight into the mouth. Though there were the occasional few drops that landed on the table, it was practically a mess-free breakfast.

Just when everything was going perfectly, Kai twisted his fingers as he was getting down from the chair. I didn't see how it happened 'cause I was putting the dishes in the sink. I heard a whine. Then he came into the kitchen holding out his "twisted" fingers (he put his fingers together and twisted his wrist so his fingers were facing to the side), and said, "Hurt." I sat down to look at his hand, "What happened?" With his eyebrows knotted and the corners of his mouth way down, he said, "Kiss." I kissed his fingers, "Okay?" A big smile blossomed across his face and he ran away to get his ball, "Bedder!"

He pulled this trick numerous times throughout the day. One time I "called him out" after he told me to kiss it:

Kate, "You're fine. You don't need me to to kiss it okay."

Kai, "...... (tilted his head to one side) pweeeeeeeeeezzzzzzz?"

He won... again!