Have Food, Will Talk

The last time that Phillip went out of town for a few weeks, I have to admit that I became frustrated that Landon wasn't doing very much talking. After all, it's hard to eat three meals a day with someone who won't talk back to you...

I told Phillip that I was tempted to "train" Landon to talk using M&M candies; I know that people have done that for potty training, and I know Landon loves some M&Ms, but ultimately we decided that probably wasn't a good idea. The thing is, he KNOWS how to say tons of words, he just doesn't want to use them. Aside - as I'm writing this, I realized that my previous sentence was ambiguous in it's subject, and then realized that the statement could apply to Landon OR Phillip (ha ha), so I left it!

So anyway, even though I knew that food is basically the only thing that can motivate Landon to do anything, I didn't want to force him to talk before he's ready, and I didn't want to create an unhealthy relationship with food for him. That brings us to this morning.

Landon and I sat down to breakfast, and he immediately began squirming in his chair. Of course, he fell off, and straight on his behind. Imagine my surprise when he hopped up, and clutching his backside yelled "Owwwwww, my butt!". First new word of the day.

Then, he decided to switch seats (a favorite pastime) so I moved over all of his things for him. As I was grabbing for his drinks (yes, he wanted two cups this morning) he yelled out "chocolate milk!", as if I was going to forgot it. Second new word of the day.

Finally, after playing with his food for awhile, and seemingly disinterested in eating, he said his third new phrase of the day. After I asked him whether he was done and he made some sort of head motion, but didn't really reply, I started to grab his plate from the table. Landon looked and me and with 100% seriousness said, "put it down".

Geez!!! I was so excited that he was talking this morning, that I was probably smiling too much as I told him "that is no way to talk to your Mom" and "you need to say please and use your table manners". I foresee that Landon may be the kid in school that steals the good things out of all the other kid's lunch boxes; here's hoping that's not the case!