While I don't have any amazingly cute Cowboy pictures to include in this post, I do have a few amazingly cute Cowboy stories to share...
Cowboy's getting 'bigga and bigga and bigga' every day. At least he tells me so frequently and often. One day, he was elaborating on this his favorite subject during the car ride home. He said, 'Momma, I so bigga, I can cut with SCISSORS!' while making little scissory motions with his hands in case I wasn't exactly sure what he
meant by "cut with scissors." So when we got home, I did what any mom would do and handed him the kitchen shears and told him to go to town. Okay, what I really did was dig through the junk drawer til I found a pair of safety scissors that I knew were there somewhere for who-knows-why, sat him down at his coloring table and told him he could cut
only paper. I was
very clear in my explanation that these scissors were
not to leave his coloring table. So imagine my surprise, dismay even, when I walked back into the kitchen after changing to find Cowboy standing
very near his coloring table but not
sitting at his coloring table, scissors raised high in the air and
eyes closed. Before I erupted, I got a little closer to see if I could divine an explanation. That's when I heard what he was mumbling, with his face raised to the scissors, eyes still closed tightly, "Guide my scissoes. Fatha, guide my scissoes. Hhmm, hhhmmmm-mmm." ( FYI, that last little bit would be the humming of a very close imitation of guitars and violins. ) That was enough explanation for me; if you're still confused, maybe you're on the wrong blog?
We've had a mild fall and early winter here in Inbetweenieweenie, IN. According to the man in my radio, that's all supposed to change today, so maybe we'll get some good Cowboy-makin-snowmen pics. But so far, we haven't had more than a dusting. Not that I'm complaining... You'd think that I'd enjoy the snow, or at least be used to it by now, spending my first 20 years in NE Ohio and the last 9 here in NW Indiana, but there ya go, yet another of life's quirks. But Cowboy
has been complaining. He's of the belief that if it's cold enough to wear mittens, there should be snowballs to throw. So as we left our house one day last week, I wasn't too surprised to hear this seemingly one-sided conversation going on between Cowboy and God:
Cowboy: Dod? Dod?
DOD!! You givin' me some snow? Peez?... ... ... Snow to mak-a no-man? Dod? Yoo tha-uh?
Impressed with this Cowboy's first attempt to reach out to his Creator through prayer, in whatever form it may have been, I spent the ride to school that day explaining that sometimes when we ask God for things, He tells us, even if we can't
hear Him, He tells us
to wait. And much to my surprise, Cowboy was okay with that explanation. Probably because he's so used to Momma's impatient voice telling him to
WAIT!The whole scenario was even more heart-stirring, if not reassuring, when Cowboy reacted to the mere dusting of snow we woke up to yesterday morning. He ran to the window upon noticing something was different outside and said, "Whuss THAT? ISS SNOW! ISS SNOW, Momma!! Iss na alotta snow. Momma, I needa ask Dod fo
allotta snow, k?" And of course, I encouraged him to do just that.
And as the temperatures fall in Inbetweenieweenie, IN, Cowboy's learning that winter isn't all snowmen and hot chocolate. He
hates being '
told.' But he's also trying to balance that with already established sleeping habits... like chucking socks before bed and kicking off covers as he falls asleep. Habits not exactly conducive to frigid Inbetweenieweenie nights. He's learning the hard way, however, as was evidenced one night recently. Cowboy had been in his John Wayne bed for a couple hours, and I had just closed my book and turned out my light. I was just settling in when I heard Cowboy yell,
NOOO-OOO! in full whine then the added sound of his feet hitting the floor and stomping across the hall. He threw himself into my room and launched himself onto my bed, half-crying and half-whining the whole time. "What? What is wrong?" I asked, knowing it was probably just the scary night bothering him and not anything serious. As he clawed his way onto my bed, he whined,
"I not nice and cozy!"Maybe if he had just said that he was cold or that he'd dropped his pillow, I'd have sent him back to bed... given his choice of words, I wrapped him in my coziest blanket and let him stay.
And I really have no way to segue into this next story, so here goes...
There I was, nice and cozy in my brown recliner, reading a magazine I had just gotten in the mail when a wiggly three-year-old suddenly thrust himself onto my ever-dwindling lap. It may have taken me three years to get used to this, but I have. So Cowboy wriggled around til he got comfortable and proceeded to deliver a running commentary/inquiry of every picture and word. Again, I'm pretty used to this. After a lengthy discussion on the merits of one Christmas cookie over another ( from an article on, you guessed it, cookie recipes ) I turned the page to find an advertisement for an electric razor. While there were many things about the ad that struck me as odd later on, namely WHY there would be an ad for an electric razor picturing a bare-chested, well-muscled male model in Family Circle, nothing immediately impressed me about the ad. Cowboy, on the other hand, was thoroughly and instantly impressed. Almost the second I turned the page, he pointed to the muscle-bound, razor-toting model and exclaimed,
"Who-ha-HOE! He's a CAMEL!"
And that concludes this chapter of
Cowboy Funnies... at least until I can catch him singing
Jingle Bells on video.