Fall! {+ Jamie-isms}

Fall has finally come to eastern Tennessee, and we are loving every minute of it! Lots of time spent recently playing outside, reading fall stories, eating soup, and finding new pumpkin recipes (how good do these look?!: pumpkin scones, pumpkin bagels, pumpkin pancakes). On a particularly cool day last week, Jamie and I had a fun fall afternoon. We made pumpkin muffins together,

 

read Halloween stories while we waited for them to bake, 

and enjoyed them on the balcony.

We’ve also collected leaves to do leaf rubbings,

practiced dressing up for Halloween (ha ha, not really, his costume will be a bit less girly),

and spent lots of time at the park.

The contents of his pocket when we got home today: a leaf, a dandelion, a seashell fragment, and a rock.

Some recent Jamie-isms (not necessarily fall related):

This morning, as soon as he woke up, Jamie declared, “Daddy smells like wombats.”

Then during breakfast, he kept talking about “the guy with the red glasses in the kitchen.” We hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, but it turned out he meant our Raphael Ninja Turtle magnet. He thought the eye mask was a pair of glasses.

A few nights ago at dinner, he said out of the blue, “Knock knock. Trick or treat. Mommy give you candy.” (he refers to himself as “you.”)

He is constantly talking about Yoda and Darth Vader and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker (whom he usually refers to simply as Skywalker). They do everything with us. The other morning at breakfast, he insisted that Yoda, Luke, Leia, and Obi-Wan were sitting at the table eating with us. Little did we know our breakfast table was the scene of Jedi councils.

We were being silly the other day and Thomas put a pair of gloves on my feet. Jamie called them “gorilla feet” and thought they were the funniest thing. He demanded a turn himself.

Whenever I ask “how are you?” Jamie invariably responds, “You are doing pretty fine.” It makes me laugh every time. He’s also very attached to the phrase “not quite.”

Around my birthday, he kept wanting to play birthday party. Once when he handed me a pretend cake, I asked what kind it was, and he triumphantly exclaimed, “cucumber cake!”

He is absurdly good at pretending. Most of the time this is wonderful, but it can backfire. Last week he insisted on getting a Curious George compilation at the library, and I literally spent an hour and a half reading Curious George stories one day (his favorite is Curious George Goes to the Hospital). I have never been so sick of a book in my life! I was so happy to take it back to the library, but the next time he asked for it, when I told him we didn’t have it anymore, he promptly “handed” me a pretend copy.

When I recently said, “Jamie, that’s a no-no,” he replied, “It’s a yes-yes!”

He has wanted to hear about Goldilocks and the Three Bears a lot recently. One night at dinner, he kept talking about it and then suddenly exclaimed, “Daddy is a Thomas Bear, Mommy is an Annie Bear, and Jamie is a Jamie Bear!” (oh yeah he likes to use our first names sometimes. Drives me crazy.)

While putting him to bed one night, he made me kiss his rabbit’s foot. Then he said, “Peter’s foot is happy. Peter is happy.”

He’s also been loving Mother Goose recently. One day at lunch he said, “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Mommy talk about it.” Another night during his bath, he (out of nowhere) said to Thomas, “Where are the fiddlers three?”

Finally, he has recently discovered “why.” It can be funny at times, but it has gotten old really fast. A typical conversation as we pulled into a gas station today:

J: Where are we?

Me: At a gas station.

J: Why are we here?

Me: We’re going to buy a bag of ice.

J: Why are we going to buy it?

Me: To keep our food cold while we go camping.

J: Why will we keep it cold?

Me: Because we won’t have a fridge while we’re camping.

J: Why won’t we have a fridge?

Me: Because there aren’t any at the campsite, so we need another way to keep food cold.

J: Why do we need it?

Me: Because some food has to stay cold or it will spoil.

J: Why will it spoil?

And on and on and on… So many conversations end up with questions I just can’t answer, like “why is a dog a dog?” or “why is a tree a tree?”

And yes, we’re going camping in the Smokies this weekend! We are very excited, but Thomas has never been camping, and I haven’t been in at least a decade. Plus, the last time I camped with a toddler, I was the toddler. Wish us luck…

And for those of you who made it this far, here is a picture of Jamie having a piggy back ride...not one I'd normally post of myself, but I felt like it really captured a moment...