Yankee Doo Doo!

I saw a book at the library yesterday-  "Your Three Year Old:  Friend or Enemy?"  This is by the author of other such classics as "Benadryl:  Ignore The Label and Go Ahead and Give It To Your Two Year Old" and "Toddlers:  Horrifically Charming or Charmingly Horrible?"  Anyway, I did not check this book out, partly because another mom of a three year old was checking it out, and besides, I already know the answer to the age old riddle of whether or not Andy is my friend or enemy.

He's neither.  He's my son, and it's perfectly normal for me to want to smother him with hugs and kisses one minute and a big heavy pillow the next.  With transitioning from two to three, I can already see that this next year will be in many ways amazing (wow, look at you learn these various semi-interesting tasks!) and in other ways infuriating (wow, I can't believe the blatant manipulation and conniving coming out of someone who doesn't even weigh 35 pounds.)

Andy turned three last Friday.  It was a perfect summer day filled with sunshine, moderate temperatures, amusement park rides, demands for cake, and then actual cake.  I feel like I should say that it's hard to believe that Andy is already three, but I do believe it, mostly because I feel like I've been telling people he's "almost three" for months now.  However, the difference between two and almost three and actually three is pretty huge. Andy has grown a lot this past year.

I think the biggest talent that Andy has fostered over the past year is his joke telling.  Admittedly, his jokes are poor and decidedly unfunny to the average adult, but I get where he's coming from, and he's at least demonstrating a sense of humor.  His best and most famous joke is "Yankee Doo Doo."  Apparently, the joke is that, instead of Yankee Doodle, he's saying Yankee Doo Doo, and doo doo is another term for poop.  Therefore, this is funny.  He has modified this joke over the past month or two, sometimes saying Yankee Doo Doo Bird, which is a combination of Yankee Doo Doo and Dodo Bird.  Then, another time he heard me telling Chris something funny that ended with me saying, "And then you kind of hate your life" (many of my funnier statements end with a declaration of just wanting to lay down and give up), and Andy latched onto that like Alex would latch on to a pickle.  So the joke became:  Yankee Doo Doo Bird hates his life!

And then, Andy is quick to command, "You have to laugh."

Andy also has a sense of when other people are telling jokes, and he is quick to laugh even if he doesn't understand.  It must be the cadence in voices that he tunes into, and he likes to laugh and remark, "You're just being silly!"  He also uses this phrase to write me off when I ask him to do something he's not interested in, such as cleaning up or taking a nap.  "You're just being silly, Mommy.  I want a cookie now."

My goal in the next twelve months of Andy being three is to try to have patience with him during difficult days and to embrace his joke telling nature instead.  I have tried to introduce him to knock knock jokes, but that was a stunning failure.  Although maybe if I mold the Yankee Doo Doo joke into that format (Yankee who?  Yankee Doo Doo!  Now laugh."), maybe I'd have more luck.

Speaking of jokes, Alex has his own silly thing that he's doing lately:  putting every bucket, basket, bowl, colander that he can find right onto his head and then walking around the house blindly, little giggles erupting from beneath said makeshift helmet.  He thinks it's the funniest thing, and between Yankee Doo Doo and Toddling Bowl Head, I really am living with two little pranksters.  It's a good thing Chris is so amazingly unfunny- I just don't know how much more laughter I can take around here.