“Tell Me”

If you ask Leo a question like, “How old are you?” or “What did you do today?” or “How many muffins did you eat?” He’ll answer with: “TELL ME.”

He even responds this way for things that the asker would not know the answer to.

For instance, “Leo, why are you crying?”

“Tell me.”

Oh, and you have to imagine this in his Georgia accent. It’s more like, “Tail me.”

Every now and then he changes it up a little and says something like, “Mama say it” and shifts the burden of answering to someone else.

And if he’s tired or wants attention, he simply answers, “NO!!”

No matter what, he’s not answering questions. He’d be a terrible witness in a court of law (or maybe a good one, depending on your perspective).

I have no pictures or videos that demonstrate this blog topic so I will just show you photos of our Easter weekend in Austin. Don’t be offended if you live there and we didn’t call. The point of the trip was to attend my sister’s Catholic confirmation. It was a fun, hot and holy weekend!

 

 

 

Easter Fever

Leo’s already participated in two egg hunts and it’s not even Easter yet! In the first one he scored four eggs (two of which were given to him by another parent) and in another one he got two. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to mind.

Egg hunt #1:

 

Leo with the Easter Bunny. He told him he wanted candy. Chocolate Candy.

 

Checking out the Easter Bunny with Dawson, Reagan and Anna:

Leo wasn’t sure about him once he stood up:

Baby Ryan says, “Will this guy bring me food? Then I like him!”

 

Egg hunt #2: Goofing around before the event:

Got an Easter egg painted on his face, which he wiped off in about four minutes.

 

 

Look at the crowd, lining up for the hunt!

Frank giving Leo a pre-hunt pep talk:

Competition was tough in the 0-2 age group. We knew Leo was on the edge so we went with the younger group. However, in this group parents were allowed to help. So that was our downfall!

Hunt was over in about one minute. Two eggs, not too bad!

 

Is that lady hiding a basket under her shirt?

Just a cute pic of my view from the kitchen sink:

And a shot of Leo’s baby brother at minus eight weeks to go!

Give this kid a job!

 

All day yesterday Leo’s major complaint was, “I need a job!” Sometimes he would just say it matter-of-fact but other times (lots of times) he would erupt into an epic melt down. He’d cry and scream and just say over and over, “I need a job!”

I kept asking, “What kind of job?” but I couldn’t get a straight answer. So later, when he was just sitting in the car calmly, I asked, “What do you mean when you say you want a job? Do you mean like you want to be like daddy and make chips?”

“No.”

“Do you want to water the plants?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be an astronaut?”

“No.”

“Do you want to sweep the floor?”

“Yes.”

Okay, so we were making progress. Leo was looking for chores to do, rather than a career.  Well, that is NO problem! I’m thinking of creating a whole chore chart and saying he can get stickers when he does them.  If he gets really good at it, I may even let you hire him from me!

Genie in the Bottle

Frank’s family has this cute tradition where they sing this little diddy at the end of the Happy Birthday song. It goes like this:

“Genie in the bottle. Who’s the happy birthday boy today? LEO!!” (Of course you say ‘girl’ if the honoree is female and you say a name other than Leo if their name happens to be something different.)

It actually was something Granny Jo’s family sang growing up and she says they got it from a TV show. Oh, and the words were really: “Genie in the bottle, what have you to say? Who’s the happy, lucky birthday boy today? Leo!!”

And the most important part: You make circles with your thumb and forefinger, turn your hands upside down and put them over your eyes as you sing.

So we’ve carried the tradition through our family and Leo is very familiar with the song. Lately, he’s been busting out with it at birthday parties and asking later why no one else is doing it. Here he is adding on “Genie in the bottle” to the Happy Birthday song at his best friend John’s party:

 

 

Here is a cute picture of the boys playing at John’s Gymboree party:

 

And Happy 3rd Birthday to John on Wednesday! John told us tonight that he’s not three yet. He said, “I’m just a little guy.”

More Leoisms

Here a few of the cute things Leo has been saying lately:

 

In the car on the way home from Creative Play I asked, “Leo, what did you do at school today?” to which he answered, as he always does, “NO!!!”

I said, “Leo, it’s not nice to scream, ‘NO!’ when someone asks you a question. Try saying, ‘I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

So Leo said, “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

To which I asked, “So what would you like to talk about?”

And Leo replied, “I don’t want to talk about anything! Can we just be quiet?”

Such a man.

He’s noticing that certain words sound like other words. For instance, I told him he were going somewhere with his friend Etienne and Etienne’s mom, Ms. Carrey. Leo said, “Carrey. That’s a funny name.” I wondered why a name like Carrey would be funny to him. A couple of weeks later when her name came up again he said, “Carrey, ha! Does she like to carry things?”

 

The other night I introduced him to pudding. “Pudding. Pudding,” he repeated as he dug into it. “Do you put things in it?”

 

We were all excited when our nephew, Franklin, was born on March 30th to Frank’s sister Julie and her husband Doug. Here is Leo’s newest cousin:

 

 

And here is what Leo had to say about Franklin as we looked at pictures: “Where is Baby Ellie? I want to see Baby Ellie.” I guess he thinks cousins are always together!

I tried to use Franklin’s birth as a way to prepare Leo for his baby brother. “So Franklin was in Aunt Julie’s belly and then they went to the hospital and he came out. That’s what will happen with our baby.” Leo asked, “Will our baby be named Franklin too?”

 

Today at the mall he saw the train but (luckily) it wasn’t ready to go yet and still had a blanket on top of it. Leo said, “The train sleeps standing up, like a horse!”

 

And here are a couple of pics of the family, doing our annual anniversary picture. If you’re not good at counting fingers, it’s eight!