Do As I Say, Not As I Say

henry has started picking stuff up from his little friends. other than just nasty germs, which he's always done well.

recently he started saying "go away, mommy!" and "go away, daddy!" (more often the latter, i feel compelled to point out. #winning).  we reprimand him when he does that and encourage nice words, nice hands, show love, etc, etc.

but then last night at dinner i find myself yelling at the dog "GO AWAY, MIA!" and this tiny voice in the high chair echoes me...

and....yea. so, do as i say...?

yipes. being a roll model is just so much durn work. i think i'm doing a bang-up job, eating my vegetables in front of him, praying before meals, reading books, just humming the number of syllables i wish i could be swearing out loud when intensely discussing something instead of actually saying the words...but i still have room to improve.

also, we're trying to avoid 'intensely discussing somethings' in front of h monkey. we're going through some big changes in our life right now- exciting changes, but stressful nonetheless, and robb and i have been grouching at each other here and there.

but we don't want henry mimicking mean words or getting freaked out by our tone. as robb astutely pointed out, henry doesn't necessarily understand the topic of our 'discussion' but he certainly senses the tone and intention. and, worst case scenario, he takes it to mean we're mad at him or that robb and i don't like each other or something. not good. he may be too little to fully understand that people can disagree on something but still respect and adore each other.

maybe this will prove to be a new useful function of texting? when i want to say something terrible and snarky to robb, i refrain from doing it out loud and instead text it to his phone so henry never has to be the wiser?

or, fine. i'll just stop saying the snarky thing in the first place! geez grumble grumble he started it never washes the bathtub grumble grumble groan.

a very smart friend posted on facebook the other day a great reminder. before we communicate anything to anyone (text/type/speak/morse code) we should run it through this test: is it kind? is it true? is it necessary?

man, that would save a lot of 'discussions' in marriage if we refrained from anything outside of those parameters, wouldn't it?

it's good to have goals.

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