Fiffie ♥s Peppers ♥s Kelly Clarkson

Have I ever mentioned that I think my youngest son is cute? He's the kind of cute that makes you want to bite his cheeks and see if they taste like fruit punch.

They do, I can vouch for them. But don't bite them, even he could tell you that would be wrong, as a reformed biter.

He's started this cute thing recently, we like to call it talking. Not just lame words like doggie or tractor, but full-on sentences.

It starts a few minutes after he wakes up in the morning, and ends a few minutes after I shut his door at night. It's exhausting. I'm one of those moms who feels obliged to carry her half of the conversation.

For instance, the other night we'd gone through our bedtime routine of me letting him know it was almost bedtime, then gathering up his blankies and checking out the stuff in his crib. As I'm doing this, he's asking where daddy was.

Where daddy?
He's outside in the garage.
No, he workin'.
Yes, he's working.
No, he workin'. Daddy workin'.
Ok, yes honey, he's working. Ok, here's monkey, and monkey, monkey, and doggie and your pillow. And two blankies. Sleep tight, baby. [Kiss him on his kissy cheeks and lay him down.]
Daddy workin'?
Yes, daddy's working. Night-night sweetpea. [Walk out the door and pull it shut behind me.]
I walked down the hallway.
Daddy workin'?

You get the idea. Well, his beloved (and I'm not kidding, the child is in love) brother's name has been a little hard for his little lispy lips to get around, so he's taken to calling him Puppers. It sounds dangerously close to Poopers but we ignore that. Most of the time it's either Peppers or Puppers, and we've decided Peppers is a great nickname for Cooper anyway.

So Peppers it is! They all laugh hysterically when I call Cooper Peppers.

And I laugh hysterically when we're riding in the car and I hear Peppers, in a sweet voice that's perfectly on pitch, sing along with Kelly Clarkson to the song Already Gone. I kid you not, for some reason the boy knows that song! And he's pretty good at it. If I ever have the forsight to get my Blackberry's voice recorder out when it's on, I'll tape it for you.

I asked Griffin the other day what his name was, and you know what he said? Fiffie. So cute.

- H