Just Like Daddy

Daddy's birthday is this week, so this post is in honor of what he means in our house... (okay really it's an excuse to dump pictures and quotations, but just humor me, ok?)

Kekoa wants to be just like Daddy. He knows that his name is the same as Daddy's, even if he goes by a different nickname, and he doesn't want to miss out on either.  It's very confusing when he goes around introducing himself: "Hi, I'm Kekoa. Hi, I'm Josh."

Josh was pumping gas the other day and when he got back in the car, Kekoa piped up: "You worked wery wery hard, Daddy. I'm so proud of you."

Josh loves to bake, and Kekoa has picked up on that. I keep a designated drawer empty to be the "oven," and I've eaten many a loaf of pretend banana bread.

They love to bake together. One day, we were serving banana bread to some of our friends.
"I made that," Kekoa said proudly to our guest.
"Oooh, what did you put in it?"
"Baking powder...and salt...and sugar....and baking powder...and lots and lots of salt...and soda. And cinnamon!"
"Wow, that's a lot of baking powder and salt."
"Yep. I loooooove baking powder!"

Our guest was gracious enough to try it anyway. :)

Josh also enjoys miniatures. After a couple years of Kekoa begging to try painting, we got the idea to give him some cheap army men and Daddy's old paints. He feels that his work is *extremely* important. Furrowed brow important, in fact.

Anything Josh says is bound to be repeated. If I tickle Kekoa, he says, "All right all right, you got me, you got me."  If I drop anything or might be hurt, "Are you okay, my love?" And, "Oh yes, indeed. You are correct."

One day Josh and Kekoa were baking scones and Ellie tried to pull down the parchment paper lining the baking sheet. Kekoa squatted down to her eye level and said very seriously in a tone he knows all too well, "Look at me. LOOK at me. We do NOT touch the paper."

Meanwhile, while Josh has Kekoa hanging on to his every word, Ellie has Daddy wrapped around her finger. How do I know? Well, one hint is that when I upload pictures to the computer, there are all kinds of random shots I don't remember taking:

Not pictured: that very same slimy chewed-up apple in its secret hiding place, aka my dresser drawer.

While Kekoa *wants* to be like Josh, Ellie *is* like Josh. While Ellie naps, introverted Kekoa and I enjoy the quiet. But if Ellie wakes up first, she spends the entirety of her time banging on the door trying to wake brother up to play.

Kekoa, after some banging woke him up: "I had a good nap. I woke up and I said, 'Who's that at the door?' and I said, 'I don't know, who IS that?' And then I said, 'Maybe it's Mommy. But maybe it's Ellie.' And now I'm saying, 'Oh yeah, it WAS Ellie'."

And then there's the attitude toward mess. MY child walked into the playroom the other day, burst into tears, and walked straight back out. "I can't play in here! It's too messy!" He's also the one who came to me, quite proud, and said, "Mommy, I made a huge mess!" I came out expecting to find flour all over or something, but then I had to take a picture of the "huge mess":

But don't worry, don't hate me yet. At that very moment, Josh's child was making herself comfortable:

The blur in the middle is OCD Man, racing in to save the day

So I suppose the moral of the story is if you marry someone with a dissimilar personality...be prepared to raise their little mini-mes. 

Happy birthday, Josh. Thanks for balancing our kids out (but oh hey, can you take the extrovert out for a while? K and I need some alone time).