This Kid Again

Remember this guy? After spending the last 5 days with him and his sister, I feel like I have really gotten to know them. His sister is just as precious and there will be more about her as the week goes on, but I felt that this guy deserves a page all his own.
I really don't even know where to begin except to say that I don't know another kid quite like him. He is 90% perfect and precious and you just can't get enough of him. His voice melts your heart, even when he's saying something he should not say. He is so cute it almost hurts my heart to look at him, especially if I have to get onto him. I can assure you, I did not want to have to get onto him at any time. But if you are cooped up in a house with 5 children, all under the age of 5, several of whom have, um, strong personalities, you have to be on top of your discipline or they'll have you tied to a chair while they dance around naked, beating each other senseless, playing with the DVD player and eating every last bite of candy in the house.
This leads me to discuss the other 10% of this kid's personality. The part that is a little less than perfect and precious. The part that is, at times, exactly like every other 3-year-old on the planet. Whining and begging and being contrary. Hitting and fighting with other kids. Not wanting to share. The part that is, at times, quite diabolical and clever. The problem, in my opinion, is that he's too smart for his own good. And that he has more time than most of the adults in his life. You see, if I've upset him by say, making him wear Scooby Doo underwear because I have 4 kids all naked and needing jammies and I don't have time to go dig in his drawer for the pair he has in mind, he doesn't forget about it. He has all the time in the world to plot his revenge against me for ignoring his pleas to let him change undies and forcing him to wear such an offending pair of underwear. I'll let you use your imagination to figure out what a child with time, an angry attitude, and a mind more clever than most would possibly do to get out of said underwear. And he did get out of them. He knew he was going to as soon as I put them on him. And if I was smart, I would have known it too.
He also gets around saying naughty words in funny ways. His mom once told me a story about how he started saying "stupid" and "butt" and he got in trouble and they told him he could never say those words. So, she heard him talking to some imaginary playmates one day and asked him who he was talking to. "I'm just talking to my friends, Stupida and butta." He wasn't saying the bad words. He just named his friends names that just happened to sound alot like the bad words.
He has a new one for stupid these days. He has said it to his dad, I am told. Everyone knows what he is saying, but he isn't exactly saying it, so what do you do? His older cousin was at the house this weekend and came in and said "He called me stupid!" I asked Cutie Pie if he had, in fact, called his cousin stupid and he said "Nope. I said STUKIN." Stukin. Seriously. This is how he gets around it. I told him that he couldn't say it anymore. He says "Is stukin a bad word?" so innocently, I almost forget that he is smarter than I am and that he knows and I know what he was trying to say. I said "No, stukin isn't even a real word, but you and I both know what you are thinking when you say it, so just forget about saying it anymore. Ok?" He said ok, but I don't feel like he meant it. I would be really surprised if stukin left his vocabulary after 5 days with me.
Ok, so that's the 10% that drives his parents crazy. It's the part that leaves you so exhausted and whipped that you just have to put him to bed and mix a vodka tonic and weep silently because you know you have been beaten by a three year old.
But remember the 90%? That's the part I remember about this weekend. Him telling me that he wants to "lay wis (with) you, Aunt Dodi, like we did that one day" or the part that says "Please can I have it sweet beautiful Aunt Dodi?" when he wants something because I told him that if he called me beautiful he can have anything he wants. Or the part that kisses me on the cheek just because I asked him to. This is the guy who, when I taught them how to make spider cookies out of Oreos, wanted to save his to show his mom and dad. Every one of the kids ate both of their cookies except him. He didn't eat a bite. He saved them because his mom and dad would like them and he wanted them to see them. (I have pictures of this for his mom and dad because I knew Oreos sitting out on a plate for a week might not be such a good idea.)
This part of him is what saves him from being banished to his bed on my last night there. We had a rough night. The 10% was in full force and he tested my limits every time I turned around. He spent more time in time out than any kid has ever done. After two "accidents" which were not accidents at all, I sent him to bed out of sheer exhaustion and frustration. He cried himself to sleep. And then, at 11:00, when he woke up yelling "Water! Water!" and came into where I was sleeping, I couldn't resist inviting him to sleep with us. He said he wanted to and he wanted to "lay wis" me, but there wasn't room. I said "You can lay over there by Avery." He said "Ok, only if I can have my white pillow." I got the white pillow. Look how precious they are.

And I laughed out loud when I was awakened at 6:30 a.m. to him yelling "My smell is not working! My smell is not working!" I couldn't quite figure out what he was saying, so I asked him. He told me. "My smell doesn't work. My snot is in the way." I said "Ok, do you want to just get up?" He said "NO, I want you to get my snot out of the way."
God broke the mold when he made this kid. (Thank goodness.) I miss him already.