Storytelling, Smarting Off, and Split Personality Disorder

Ben LOVES when we tell him made-up stories and he loves to make them up too. Many times a day he'll come up to me or Mike and say, "Tell me a scary story." I don't know what it is about scary stories that intrigues him?! He likes to be scared! If they aren't scary enough he will let us know. We usually incorporate some scary sound effects and faces to add to the excitement (and so does he!).

Tonight Ben was going off on one of his storytelling rants and, I'm not joking, he was talking non-stop for 10 minutes or more just going on, and on (stopping only to take an occasional breath). His story was about a scary, red monster with no ears (I don't know about you, but earless monsters really FREAK me out!? :) ) Anyway, whenever he tells a story he loves to throw in the phrase..."when all of a sudden...". I think it adds a dramatic element to the story, don't you?! Part of his story tonight involved the monster getting a "sore booty" and saying, in a very stern tone, "Change my diaper!" Ooooohhhhh....nothing scares me more than a bad case of diaper rash! :) Throughout the story the freaky, red, earless monster interacted with just about every cartoon character known to man (boots, dora, diego, diego's jaguar, pooh, kanga, roo, monty and max, thomas and the list goes on!). He ended the story by saying that we got away from the monster by running "as fast as our feet would carry us." What a nut!? I just LOVE it!

On another, not so cute, note...

I raised my voice at Ben yesterday because he wasn't listening to me. This was his response (Warning: It's not pretty!)... "Mommy, don't yell at me. That's not nice. You are disrespectfuling me. You don't tell me what to do. I tell you what to do. I am in charge." My immediate thought was, "OH MY GOSH, what a little booger!" DISRESPECTFULING? I guess he couldn't decide if he wanted to tell me that I was disrespecting him or that I was being disrespectful?! Everything he said was something I've told him before and apparently he felt the time was right to throw it all back at me. It was hard not to just laugh...but, of course, I had to do the motherly thing and tell him that he can't talk to mommy like that and that he needs to obey me when I ask him to do something...etc, etc. Oh...and I apologized for raising my voice at him too...since he was right, that's not very nice! :) I have a feeling this is just the beginning of many "smarty pants" comments to come. Oh boy!

Last, but not least...

During Ben's bath last night I thought maybe he had split personality disorder. Below is the progression of moods I witnessed in about a two minute time span. At least he has rapid rebound time, right?

All smiles in the bathtub.

30 seconds later (his band aid fell off his hand exposing his very serious wound to the warm bath water).At this point he is probably thinking..."Mom, I'm serious. This really hurts. Look at it. Don't you feel my pain?" I guess it wasn't THAT bad. He's back to smiling within a minute.
P.S. As I was writing this post I heard him in the kitchen looking out the deck window talking to the flowers. He said... "I love you so much, flowers. I can hardly stand it." Where does he get this stuff!? :)