Sincerest Form of Flattery

If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, then Kevin and I should be feeling beyond flattered these days. Cole has been copying things that we do for awhile now, but it is getting to be even more of a regular occurrence.

One of the first blogs that I ever wrote was about how Kevin and Cole have a morning routine that they go through together- hair, teeth, deodorant, all that. They still do that, and heaven forbid Kevin brushes his teeth without Cole… well, let’s just say my son is not a happy camper. It’s actually come in handy with things like getting Cole to take his vitamin every morning because Daddy is taking his.

But now Cole has taken things to another level. Sometimes when I talk, he repeats everything that I say. Well, not necessarily the entire sentence, but the last word of every sentence. Yeah, that gets annoying pretty fast. And he definitely knows what he is doing, because he laughs and makes faces at me when he does it… like he knows he is up to something bad.

One day as we were leaving for daycare, I said to Cole, “let’s rock and roll.” It isn’t even something that I say very often, but now we are stuck with it. He says it to me all the time. Now he even opens the fridge and sees the bag of rolls and asks to have a “rock and roll.” I’ve tried to explain the difference, but he either doesn’t get it or chooses not to. Another favorite thing to repeat is “knock it off.” When he is acting up, I tell Cole to knock it off, and he says it right back. Hard to maintain any ounce of respect when that happens.

Last weekend, we had the moment that I had been waiting for. As a parent, you do your best to avoid it, but you know that inevitably you will slip up, and it will happen. The three of us were going food shopping, and Kevin was rearranging things in his trunk to make room for the bags. I don’t remember if he hurt his hand or what happened, but he said, “oh, fudge.” Only he didn’t use the word fudge. (Use your imagination.) I looked back at him quickly, as I was getting Cole into his car seat, and just said “language.”  Well, my 2 year old looked right at me and said, “oh, fudge.” (Again, a euphemism here.) I tried my best to do the right thing and correct him, but I started laughing so hard that I had to walk away so he couldn’t see my face. I mean, what do you do in this situation? I composed myself as much as I could, walked back over to him and explained that we don’t use that word. Now let’s just hope that doesn’t happen in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because not everyone would be so flattered by my son’s imitations.