super nanny.

Last Saturday I babysat for my favorite little tyke who I'll refer to as Jet (not sure why, but it seems to fit his personality). After a 10-second cryfest when his mom left (I distracted him by carrying him around upside down for awhile... thinking of how I'd feel being carried around upside actually kind of nauseates me, but for some reason kids love it. Whatever, it works.), we dove into serious play mode including a trip to the park and Jet showing me how he can ride his new bike. Mind you, him "riding" his new bike actually was me pushing this weird-looking bike thing and him pedaling at random, basically having no effect on whether he was moving forward or not. The only tricky part was getting him to keep the handlebars going straight... I'm sure we looked really special walking down the sidewalk running into flower pots, garages and falling into cracks as Jet thought it was necessary to crank his bars right and left at will.

When we got back, we went in for a little juice break and what does little Jet do? He chugged down some Apple J, fooled me into giving him two packs of gummy things (oops), then walked over to me, froze for a second, then dropped a huuuuge F bomb. Fart, that is. I felt like a proud mother goose watching her gosling fly. I was so surprised he actually pulled that off, it took me a second to collect my thoughts until I finally could ask, "WHAT was THAT?" He grinned and announced, "I fawted!" I knew I loved this kid before, but come on, this just sealed the deal. Naturally, I high-fived him and tried to pull the whole matronly "say excuse me" thing, but all I could do was laugh. So there I was at a "mature 23," giggling with a 2-year-old over a fart. Super.

Being the 2-year-old that Jet is, he hasn't quite mastered his language skills yet. He was running around outside yelling what I could only distinguish as "asshole!". I'm not gonna deny the fact that this was adorable, but I kept asking what he was talking about and why he was saying that word... and never got a response until his mom got home. Apparently some 8th grade-neighbor came over the other day and taught him how to say Awesome. So when his mom got home and he all of a sudden became this crazed child running around yelling asshole, he was actually telling her, "Hey mom, she's AWESOME." Nothing like a little street cred from a toddler. Cheers to me.