Do not stick that in your ear!

Do not stick that in your nose!!

The last two times Blake has visited, the three of us (me, Trent and Kat) have found ourselves saying these things.

Lately, Blake has had this weird obsession with trying to put EVERYTHING either up his nose or in his ear.

The list of items is long:

avocado
peanut butter
Mickey Mouse's tail
his finger
someone else's finger
the straw on his sippy cup
beads from his necklaces
Cheerios
Q-tips

and I'm sure there are other things that I didn't catch or have already forgotten about.

A lot of people have asked about the beads. He really, really likes shiny and pretty things and he was always trying to wear my pearls and other necklaces. I didn't want them accidentally flushed down the toilet (which he has been known to do with other items) so I bought him his own beads.

He LOVES them. They were two bucks at Walmart. I now use them as his currency. For example, if he runs away from me in the parking lot, he loses beads. When he does something nice or holds my hand all the way across that parking lot, he gets them back.

It seems to work pretty well.

When he was here yesterday, I noticed that he kept calling Kat and I, "Mom" or "Mama". He called my mother that, too. When his Aunt Courtney picked him up, I asked her what he calls her and she said, "Mama or Mom".

Then we asked Blake to tell us, "Who is that?", and we pointed to Trent.

Blake replied with what sounded like, "Bubba Gene".

Trent was slightly irritated with the name, "Bubba Gene". I kinda liked it and so did Kat.

"Bubba Gene" was Trent's name for the rest of the afternoon. If there was anything Trent learned this summer, it was to ignore mild teasing because any negative reactions caused more "Bubba Gene" comments. I am my father's daughter after all.

We only have a couple more weeks of Blake left. His mother and father are moving to Texas and they're taking him with them. The nerve, huh?!

I don't know when I'll be able to see him again because we really don't have a lot of cash to spend on luxury items like vacations and roof repairs. So, we will have to just settle for lots and lots of pictures for now and record goofy stories about "Bubba Gene" and "Mickey Mouse tails up noses".

I know it will all work out in the end.