And suddenly, he grew up

I'm not sure what happened to Ayden overnight, but he is a different boy today. Maybe it was sleeping in his own urine all night (we didn't realize until this morning that he took off his diaper before falling asleep--yuck!). Maybe it was hanging out with a cool babysitter last night. Maybe he just grew up.

Now I know that he still has a lot of growing up to do, I'm not saying he has grown up in the "completed" sense. But he is older today than he was yesterday.

This morning, he was sitting on Luke's lap and his feet were freezing (he had just gotten out of his unexpected bath from the lack of a diaper). He was telling Luke, "Feet owie" over and over again. Before Luke could respond, he nestled his feet under Luke's legs and said, "that's better." What? Since when has my kid EVER said that?

Later, he came to sit next to me on the couch while I fed Judah. Instead of climbing up clumsily like he usually does, he made a tarzan-like cry and leapt up onto it. Very little-boyish. Not very still-learning-to-get-around-ish. He's climbed up on the couch hundreds of times and I have never seen him playfully jump up like that. It's always been a very practical endeavor.

Not long after that, he found one of my slippers and said, "Ayden slipper!!" as he put it on his foot and started walking around. Now this is not too unusual for him--he loves to say things that are incorrect and wait for my reaction. It's a little game that we've developed. But this time he took it a bit further. After I exclaimed, "no, that's Mama's slipper!" he started laughing and informed me, "Ayden funny." This conversation repeated itself over and over for about 10 minutes with him letting me know that he was "silly" or "funny" every time.

Then, as we were arriving home from the morning out with his aunt and cousins, he had another suprising statement to make. I had the radio playing while I was driving. When I turned the car (and therefore the radio) off, he commented, "good song, radio." Huh? He always says "radio" whenever he means "music" or "song" or whatever, so I was surprised to hear him refer to it as a song. In addition, since when does he know how to judge if he likes something or not by saying it is "good?" Then to use it in the correct formation like that?!?!

Seriously, aren't these things supposed to happen more gradually?!?