Just Like Me

If you ever want to be acutely aware of your actions and behaviors just have kids. I’ve got two little imitators who watch my every move. Even Arlo has started to mimic my tone and actions, apparently I like to make a surprise face when I look at him and say “Hi” A LOT. Every time any of my kids see a doctor the report is, they sure do excel vocally. You think?!


One of Kinsley’s most favorite things to play with is a cell phone. I’ve found that I can give her a calculator and she thinks it is a phone—if you recall she ate the spacebar in my phone TWICE, so I don’t really trust her with it! She puts the phone (calculator) to her ear, tips her head to one said and says “Heyyyyy!! I good, how you? Oh that good.”

Whenever Arlo or Kinsley are carrying on, Greyson asks “what’s your deal?” You can also see me in his words when he says, “Oh you’re okay. Come here, I’ll give you a hug.”

The whole mimicking thing can be pretty darn cute but it also makes me take note of every single little thing I do or say.

Yesterday I was dying my hair, still trying to recover from the whole “let’s dye it blonde” fiasco. Being that we have well water that makes it so I can’t even run a brush through my hair unless I use special shampoo, I figure it might be good to use a hair treatment before putting dye on it. The last thing I need is to have the dye take funny and end up with purple tiger stripes (this has actually happened before! It was less than lovely!)

I put the treatment on my hair then put a plastic bag on my head to make the heat stay in and help it to work more effectively. My two little monkeys are standing in the bathroom door starring at me. Let’s see, a toddler putting a plastic bag on their own or anyone else’s head?!!

I remain in constant fear of someone suffocating or putting something on anyone else’s head. I don’t know why, I mean just because my kids make absolutely everything from sand buckets to shoeboxes be a hat and I came upstairs one day to find they had piled ALL of the laundry on top of Arlo because he “looked cold” I get a little nervous. We have a very clear rule—do not EVER put anything on Arlo’s face. However, the rules about what you put on your own head are a little vague. I don’t want to hinder their creativity and tell them that they can’t put buckets on their head, what fun would that be?

So I need to be very clear in this whole plastic bag covering hair issue. “Only grownups can put bags on their head. I don’t want to EVER see you doing it. Got it?”

Greyson says with as much enthusiasm and energy as if we were in the land of ChewandSwallow* and it’s raining donuts: When I get big, so big I can touch the ceiling, I am going to put a bag on my head! It will be so cool. I can wear a bag on my head and go and get french fries.

Me: Um sure. When you can touch the ceiling you can do that.

Greyson: Yeahhh!! I can’t wait to get big to put a bag on my head!

I think it is good to have goals and things to look forward to so I just left the whole conversation right there.

*It’s the name of a town in a book/movie. I’ll give you a hint, food rains from the sky. Like Duh.