As mentioned in my weekend recap, we celebrated Ankur’s birthday this past weekend. And it started out with a delicious treat. The Hodels had a box of donuts delivered and Ishu, of course, claimed every single one of them for himself.

As I was getting ready to plate one for him, I asked, “Do you want some milk with your donut?”

He quickly responded, “You mean….DONUTS.”

He’s very much in the “Actually…” and “You mean…” phase right now. Correcting my every verbal error. (Although, I will argue that my choice of a singular ‘donut’ vs. ‘donuts’ was intentional).

Like, the one time I was trying to move the bookshelf into the other room and I had him help me move all the books over first.

He kept saying, “Look how many books I’m holding. I’m so strong. Look how many books I’m holding!”

To encourage the behavior, I acknowledged. I reinforced. “Yeah, look how many books are in your hand!”

At which point, he placed said books on the ground and said, “Actually, you mean, my handS.”

Okay, sir.

I am not ready for the lecturing I’ll get when he’s in Geometry or Physics and learning stuff my brain has dumped out years ago.

Anyway, I’m still the mama and I’ve got my fair share of teachable moments.

But, also, there are some moments I just don’t wanna correct because I LOVE THE WAY HE SEES THE WORLD AND MAKES SENSE OF IT.

Like, that one time, he tried to play Hide & Seek at the grocery store.

And I lectured him the whole way back to the car about how it was important that we don’t hide from mama in a public place. Explaining to him WHY it was important. And being honest that there are people out there who do bad things. I used the word “kidnap” at some point. Saying something along the lines of, “Some person could kidnap you and take you away from mama.”

He was quiet for a bit after I buckled him in to his car seat.

I felt bad about how hard I came down on him.

So I looked in the rearview mirror and reached behind the passenger seat to put my hand on his knee. “Mama loves you so much. It would break me if something happened to you. I love you and I never want to lose you.”

He whispered back, “I love you. I don’t want you to get grown-up-napped too.”

Okay.

This is the whiplash they speak of.

The actual AUDACITY of my 4-year old to try to school me with his limited knowledge of the world. I mean, you just learned to talk, dude.

And then, one second later, looking into his eyeballs and feeling the deepest kind of love that ever existed.

Back and forth.

All the live long day.