Transition

The past week or 2 I've noticed that Alex will occasionally call me Mom instead of the standard Mama. After being Mama for 4.5 years, it always catches me off guard. I think it makes him sound so old. He still has a very little boy voice, so it's hard to hear such a big boy (at least to us) word in that little voice.

Other fun Alex randomness:

The other night Kaitlyn was screaming and crying during dinner and Alex turns to her and says in a stern voice (after Daddy was doing much shushing), "We're trying to eat here!" Any ideas who he got that one from?

Alex has been really into smells lately. The other day we were in D.I. and Alex goes, "I smell hot dogs! Mmm! I think I want to eat one when we get home!" There was some other place where he told me that it smelled like burritos and at my cousin's house on Sunday he walked up and told me that it smelled like dogs. How he knew what dogs smell like, I do not know.
I absolutely love seeing him recognize and get excited about familiar smells and seeing what he thinks things smell like. It's really fun!

The other night we went out to eat at a mexican restaurant and we were running low on chips and salsa when the waitress came to take our order. We had told Alex that we could ask the waitress to bring us more chips and salsa when she came back because he was sad that the chips and salsa were all gone. So we go to order our food and Alex interjects in a very matter of fact way saying that we need more chips and salsa. And then when we ordered a soda Alex interrupted again and ordered a soda for himself. He is definitely not shy about talking to people.

Alex has been loving the warmer days and being able to play out in all of our dirt. The rain boots from D.I. have been one of the best purchases ever! He loves to throw around clumps of dirt and he loves that he has 2 friends that live right behind him that also love to come and dig in our dirt. He's very excited about having a garden and planting things. I'm already trying to drill it into his head that we have to leave the plants in the ground. Last year he was quite handy at pulling all of my mom's flowers out in the name of his garden.

When we told Alex that we were going to have all of his toys downstairs and have a room just for toys to play in he was excited, but very concerned. He told me, in near tears, that if we took all of his toys downstairs then he would just have a grown-up room and he didn't want to have a grown-up room. It's so funny to see how his brain works.

Which reminds me, when Alex was a baby he slept with a green silky/minky blanket. I bought him a blue blanket like it, though not the exact same...it was a different brand and had an embroidered bear on the minky side, to use when his green blanky was in the wash. Eventually he developed a preference for the blue blanket and I could never figure out why. Recently when I was putting him to bed he told me to take the green blanket to bed with me and I asked him why he liked the blue blanket more than the green blanket. He told me it was because the blue blanket felt softer and nicer (all he cares about is the silky side). I was baffled and didn't believe him. They were the same silky fabric! So I felt both of them and the blue blanket's silk side WAS actually softer and silkier than the green. The green one felt stiffer and had some snags/runs in it that were affected how smooth it felt.
So there was actually a reason for moving to the blue blanket from the green... it actually felt better and softer to him. It was so interesting to me to finally figure that out and to have him actually TELL me why he liked the blue blanket better.

So that's a bit about Alex. He's mostly cute and funny, but still drives me crazy a lot. He's 4 after all.