Monkey See, Monkey Do

Well, I think we all know how we often see ourselves in our kids… sometimes it’s the good stuff, sometimes the not-so-good. Kids are smart and observant and pick up on even the littlest things so much more than we realize… and then we see something or hear something that we recognize as our own—after that it becomes very obvious just how often we do it or say it! I can remember one time a few years ago when I was trying to pull out of a parking lot. My oldest daughter was three then. Let’s just say that the traffic was not being very cooperative! I was close to an intersection, so by the time the cars driving towards me had cleared, the ones stopped at the light were backed up and blocking me. After sitting through a couple light changes, I wondered why the cars stopping right in front of me at the driveway weren’t leaving me some courtesy pull-out space. To me, that just seemed like a pretty obvious thing to do! Seemingly on the same brain wave as her moma, from the backseat, M chirps up, “Well, stink. Stinkin’ truck, move out of our way!” It caught me off guard to hear my little girl say that. (It also made me laugh a little, too!) After she said it, I became conscious of just how often those little words left my lips. I’m just grateful that “stink” and “stinkin’” were the extent of my I’m-irked vocabulary.

In the kitchen, I have my jar of Sanity Mints. They’re pretty much reserved for me. The kids know them as “Moma Mints.” They know that they’re mine, even though they don’t really see me eat them that much. I usually try to be discreet about it—you know, the turn-the-back-and-sneak-it-into-the-mouth thing. Sometimes a mom just needs a little candy to get through the day. I guess what I didn’t realize was just OFTEN I needed it! I noticed my jar emptying out more quickly than I would have expected. I knew I was eating a good number of mints, but, wow, I was really a mint piggy! My littlest girl just turned 2. She’s quiet with big eyes and a mischievous smile; she’s a feisty one… and she’s sly and stealthy! Just recently, I walked around the corner and headed into our kitchen. S was busy at her sly, stealthy work, so I stopped to observe her for a while. She would get a barstool, silently slide it over to the counter, climb up, pull out the jar of mints, get one out, push the jar back into place, hop off the stool, slide it back to its spot, and then unwrap and eat her mint. Then as soon as the mint was in her mouth and the wrapper in the trash, she started the whole process over again. She did all this very quietly and very efficiently. I watched her do the routine a couple times before stopping her. After all, she was eating all of my sanity mints! I guess she’s seen me enough that she knows it must be something good. And, here I thought that I was the one being sly and stealthy when I was eating my mints!!

I guess there’s a good reason that imitating is “to ape.” Okay, technically speaking, monkeys aren’t apes, but my little monkeys have aping down pat!

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