Good Boy

After opening our presents on Christmas, my living room looked as though a cardboard bomb had exploded. There was a lot of wrapping paper, too, but mostly cardboard boxes from the various shipments Grammy sent and Mommy got online. Some boxes were too big and cumbersome to wrap, so they just got a bow. The drums were one such present.

Jimi is really starting to be helpful of late, so Dapo started showing him how to throw the wrapping paper away in the garbage. In retrospect, we should have used a black trash bag for this task, but as they say: live and learn. We were so proud of our little helper that every small fistful of paper that went into the garbage brought laudations of "Good Boy!".

Since that glorious Christmas morn, we have come to find various household items in the trash. A shoe, socks, remote, telephone, and legos, just to name a few, have been tossed into the garbage at Jimi's whim.

On Sunday I came home from church and was on the phone with my mom. Jimi is usually ready for a nap by this time, and since he snacks at church, he goes straight to bed when we arrive back at home. When we got inside, my mom asked, "what did he just say?", to which I replied, "I do not know". This is often the case, although I am getting better at deciphering his language. "He said it twice, I heard him," she insisted, "have him show you". I knew Jimi's mind had since moved on, but to appease my mother, I asked him to show me. He took me to the back door, which has a window pane inside of it, and I knew this was just an attempt to go outside. I relayed this to my mom, sure that the moment had passed to find out what he was trying to say.

By this time I had moved into the laundry room to hang his diaper bag for the next excursion, and he followed me. I picked him up to carry him to his crib. As we walked through the kitchen, he said it again. "There he goes again!" my mom said. Such a curious Grammy! I put him down for his nap and went back to the kitchen. I had walked by the garbage can when he had said the last thing he had said. I opened up the garbage and there lay my favorite blouse! As I picked it up, the pear core and seeds it had been laying on since morning fell back into the trash and I suddenly knew what Jimi had been saying.

When you tell him good boy, he tries to repeat it and it usually comes out as "gee-gah". I asked my mom if what she had heard was "gee-gah" and she said, "yes". I relayed to her that he had said "gee-gah" because he was walking by the trash and was telling me what a good boy he was for having attempted to throw away my favorite blouse...

My blouse (which is one of the only ones that fits this late in my pregnancy, I might add) is now sitting in the dirty clothes hamper! Every time we hear the lid on the garbage now, we look to see just how good of a boy Jimi has been.