"Like, I'm happy!"

A word he says a lot is like. Along with umm, uhh, ooh, and since wednesday, oh. I ask him to do something, he says oh. I ask him to stop doing something he says, oh. I tell him something he says, oh. And he's always adding, "or something" at the ends of what he says. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes not as much:

"I want some cereal or something."

"Is this my shirt or something?"

"Are we gonna go or something?"

"Is this Baba's or something?"

And a while back he put his fingers right in my face and said, "This is from my nose or something." Gross, put it in the trash! I love how now his sentences end in a higher pitch especially when he asks questions. I haven't been keeping track of everything he says very well so now I'm catching up before I forget! He's always been demanding but now sometimes he adds, "...if you want to." The first time I heard it is when I left my crafts out in the middle of a project. He says to me, "Why you didn't clean it? You can put it away. If you want to." He'll tell me to do something and add it at the end. I try not to laugh each time. It's his nice way of being demanding. He also says to me, "Don't make a mess!" or "Why you make a mess?" As if I'm not already overly obsessive with keeping things clean, I've got a constant reminder all day long. I can't live up to my own cleaning expectations or my three old's either. Why do I bother?

When NJ turned three, the why's and how come's started. Then it turned into him repeating everything twenty times over. After about the tenth time, I stopped having the patience to answer for what feels like the millionth time. Now he has constant commentary, questions, or whining about something. All these have us on the verge of either crying or bursting into laughter, it's a strange fine line. I try my best to be patient and laugh instead of fuming with frustration. I don't know what happened when he turned three, but a switch was flipped and the calm, mellow boy we knew is now non-stop moving, talking, fidgeting, yelling, running, screaming... God, give us patience!