I ran out of time last night, here's the bulk of the funny-cute-memorable things that come out of this little guy:
1. When I put Cole to bed I ask, "Can I have a kiss?" His response for weeks was, "I'm gonna give you "NOTS uh tissus" (lots of kisses)." And he would give me kisses on my hair, my cheeks, my ears, my fingers, my nose, my eyes, and he always asked if he could kiss my feet...yuck. We're not parent-child mouth kissers around here but he usually asks to kiss me on the mouth. "No, silly, you can kiss on the mouth when you get married like Mommy and Daddy are married." For awhile this would bring on tears but now he asks just to be funny.
2. After goodnight kisses and praying together, he always asks me to "Sing a song with my fingers." One time when I was singing to him I tapped out the beat of the song on his fingers as I sang. Since then, every time I put him to bed he wants me to do that. If I don't find his hand when I start singing I'll feel his little hand searching for mine as he whispers, "With my fingers."
3. Cole hated baths for the first 2 years of his life, and really hasn't enjoyed them until the last 9 months or so. He doesn't like being naked and hates water in his eyes and being cold. When he gets out of the tub I towel him off and then he wraps his towel around himself and says, "Hold me like a baby" in a very forlorn voice like he's going to collapse if I don't. He wants me to pick him up in a cradle hold and carry him to get clothes on. It's so funny to hear that little voice wimpering, "Like a baby! Like a baby!"
4. What child doesn't like making tents? Whenever Cole is near as I make our bed, he jumps up on it and says, "Make a tent with the white blanket! Let's make a tent!" I usually oblige and we get on the bed and I trap air in a bubble under the blanket with us and hold the edges down. But it's hard to get my 5'10" frame completely under the blanket so I usually would just put my upper body in it with him. Not good enough. If my feet weren't in it too he would say, "With your feet! Put your feet in!" So now he asks for that from the get-go and says, "Let's make a tent with the white blanket and your feet!" He checks too, every time, to make sure my feet are in the bubble with us.
5. Going back to goodnight kisses, Cole loves my earrings. They always each get a goodnight kiss from him and usually he says, "I like these earrings." I wear earrings every day but one day I had happened to take them off before his bedtime. He put his hands on my ears where he usually likes to touch my earrings before he gives them a kiss and was surpised to find them bare. "Mommy? Do you have any earrings on today?" Me: "No, not today, I took them off already." He looks at each ear and then moves on. But every time I do have them on I hear, "Mommy, I like your earrings."
6. Perhaps it's the earring compliments where I always respond with "Thank you," I'm not sure, but recently Cole has started to understand how compliments work and for several days would ask me, "Mommy, do you like my shirt?" Me: "Yes, I do." Cole:"Thank you," very matter-of-factly. A few minutes later: "Mommy, do you like my socks?" Me: "Yes, I do, they're very nice." Cole "Thank you." So cute :)
7. We always pray before we eat, and Cole is adamant about this. He rarely forgets, and he knows he's supposed to wait until we pray before he eats, which he usually remembers to do. One day we had friends over and in the mayhem of talking with my friend and getting food on the table for all the kids, we forgot to pray. While the kids were eating in the dining room, my friend and I were talking in the kitchen. After about 5 minutes I hear Cole call, "Mommy, you forgot to pray!" I went in and there he was, watching everyone else eat, hadn't touched his. :)
8. When Tyson goes to bed we always say, "Alright, say goodnight to Ty-Ty!" And everyone waves to him as we carry him to bed. Cole often comes running behind and says, "Wait! I want to give him a kiss and a big hug!" which he does with great care :)
9. Children's memories are amazing. One day we went to the Children's Museum and saw 3 deer on the side of the road (we live next to the Natchez Trace). For weeks after that, every time we passed that spot I would hear from the back of the car, "No deers today."
10. When I talk on the phone, Cole is waiting to pounce as soon as I hang up EVERY TIME with: "Mommy, what was that?" He means 'who' but I haven't been able to convince him of that. I'll tell him who it was and it's immediately followed with, "And what she say?" He wants a run-down of the conversation every time :).
11. Thomas and Cole were working in the garage one day while Tyson and I were inside, and Thomas blew the leaves and grass out of the garage to clean it up. After he's done Cole says, "Thank you for being a big helper Daddy."
12. Althought not particularly independent by nature, he's definitely hit the stage of wanting to do things by himself if he can. As with a number of phrases he says often, he's one word off and he always says, "I want to do it in myself!"
13. He loves to open Tyson's door when Tyson wakes up from his nap and gets very offended if I do it without him. Several times I apparently opened it before he could get there, so then he started telling me, "Mommy, get behind me" as we were both headed for the door. He was like a little shepherd and I was his flock. He made sure I was NOT trying to get past him before he would open the door :).
14. A number of months ago we started teaching Cole the child's prayer of "God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food." Apparently our teaching tactics were out of wack because for weeks he was stuck with something like this: "God is good...God is good...
...Let us thank him for our food. Amen." Thomas would try to correct him mid-prayer to help get him on track but it didn't help so finally we went back to saying the whole prayer through ourselves several times instead of trying to teach it to him in parts like we had the first time. After a day and a half he could do it perfectly. It's interesting how minds and memorizing works, we had tried for WEEKS to teach it to him in parts only to have all the pieces mixed up every time. So I'll remember, the way it sounds when his little voice says it is, "Dod is date, Dod is dood, yet us sank him sor our sood." The F and G sounds are still tough ones. 15. One of the cutest things he's started doing that makes me so happy when I hear, is when he pretends. He likes to play with my belts or a tape measure or anything long that he can find, and usually he plays that he's taking doggies for a walk. Sometimes they're snakes, though. One afternoon I was sitting outside watching them play and he brought a stick over. Very quietly he says earnestly, "Mommy, it's a snake. You can pet him, he's real sweet." Apparently that's what I tell him about dogs that he's mortally afraid of, "You can pet him, he's real sweet," because he tacks that on every time when he brings me a new item that's some kind of animal that he wants me to pet. "He's wuh seet" is what it sounds like."
16. I don't generally get up early enough to shower before the boys get up (when Tyson's up at 6:00 it's hard to beat him). So I'm usually putting on makeup with Tyson playing by my feet and Cole sometimes sitting on the counter playing "cutting my fingernails" on himself with a tweezer. One day he dropped my eye-liner off the counter and Tyson got it. He had previously asked me what it was called and I told him, and the moment Tyson touches it he yells, "Tyson! Don't touch that EYE WIPER!"
17. I was going to take the boys for a walk one morning and already had Tyson in the stroller when I ran back inside to get something off the counter. I could hear them in the garage right next to where I was so I knew they were fine. A moment later I turn around and there's Tyson, in the stroller, right next to me in the kitchen. Cole has pushed him inside the house. "Cole, what are you doing?" I ask since Cole knows that outside things don't come inside. Very seriously he says, "He wanted his momma."
18. Thomas got a big pumpkin and a little pumpkin for him to carve and Cole to color respectively. I came out to see how the project was going after awhile and said, "Cole, that looks great!" He responds with, "It looks great because I did a great job." There you have it :)
19. Cole is still obsessed with the zoo and for several weeks would ask several times a day if we could go. "Are we going to the zoo today?" I would hear over and over. Finally he came up to me one day whining and whining that he wanted to do something fun. I told him I was working in the kitchen and he needed to go find something fun to do on his own until I finished and to stop the whining. He comes back in a pleading voice with, "I want to go to the zoo, that will make me better."
20. Cole's not a picky eater, and he loves to eat, usually clearin his plate. He always asks what's all on his plate when I set it in front of him, and one night I told him, "It's chicken and applesaue and pizza." "Chicken and applesauce and pizza?!?!??! YIPPEE! That's just what I need!" he shouts.
21. When he's preoccupied he sometimes calls me "Daddy" or Thomas "Momma." One day he was playing with Thomas in his room and said, "Hey Daddy?" Thomas says, "I'm not Momma, I'm Daddy, the WRESTLER!" (They love to wrestle together) Cole says, "You're the wrestler, and Momma's the cleaner. She does the dishes." Hmmm...
22. Tyson threw up a couple times the week of Thanksgiving, and one of those times was unfortunately on a chair that took awhile to clean up. Cole, never having thrown up in his memory, is fascinated by it. He walks up close and says, "Mommy, what IS that?" I've already told him but he wants to hear it again. "Tyson doesn't feel good and he threw up," I tell him as I continue to try to clean it up. "Can I touch it?" Cole asks nonchalantly.
23. Today at lunch I had just given them both a bath after letting them play in the mud and dirt outside. Tyson was tired and hungry so I whisked him quickly to his high chair without brushing down his hair. He consequently had a peak of hair on his head that made a small triangle/cone shape. Cole kept looking at him during lunch and then he said, "Mommy, Tyson has silly hair." Me: "Yeah, he does. I didn't have time to make it nice." Cole, giggling: "He looks like a silly birthday man." A pretty far stretch for a small peak of hair to remind me of a birthday hat, but to him it was apparently the perfect correlation.
24. Cole has finally clicked into the realm of learning his colors. I was beginning to think he was legitimately color-blind because of his amazing ability to recall so many other things, and his inability to name ANY color consistently. But one day, out of the blue, it clicked. "Mommy that's a black car. And that's a white one," he said at a stop light. I nearly fell out of my seat! I began asking him other colors and he knew red, green, and blue. It had been filing away in his brain somewhere and when it clicked it seemed to all click at once. So never fear, those of you moms who are worrying that your child is behind. This joyful little 3-year-old sat up, crawled, walked, talked, knew his colors, and is still being potty trained after almost all the other boys his age at church did each of those things, and he's just as smart as a whip. He did it all in his own time. It's been such a good lesson for me in just enjoying what MY BOY is doing, not in worrying about what everyone else's boys are doing. God made them the way they are, and him just like he is, and I love this little guy to PIECES!
25. For this next one you'll need to bear in mind Cole's obsession with the zoo and exotic animals, many of which he knows the names. Thomas and Cole were riding in the car together on their way home and Thomas was teasing him about whose house they were going to. "It's my house," he would say. "No, it's MY house!" Cole would reply. So Thomas said, "It's not your house, I pay the bills. Do you pay any bills?" Cole replies matter-of-factly, "Yes." Thomas: "Which bills do you pay?" Cole: "Hornbills."
What a wonderful time of life!
My lap was a perfect spot to store candy...perfect for me to eat it from as well.
Here's my Momma and Daddy....awww, aren't they cute?
And here's Nana and Pop-pop. My Nana got married this summer to a wonderful man named Kerry. His wife went to be with Jesus just like my Grandpa Dennis went to be with Jesus, and now God brought them to each other. God is a good God. 
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