cereal killer

Today after nap I took a good look at Nathan, who happened to be popping out of size 2T jeans, and I noticed how slim he looked to me. Sure, he's still little and has this round little face, but his body is stretching, and he's starting to look more like a boy and less like a toddler.

"Nathan, you're getting to be such a big boy," I said.

"Yes," he replied, "And maybe when I'm gonna be big, I'm gonna get a KNIFE!"

?

He has made comments about knives more than once over the past few days. At first it frightened me, too, especially given his excitable and hysterical and rough nature. Because I pictured a large, sharp, pointy hunting knife. And I thought "No way in hell."

But then I realized he was talking about getting a knife AT THE DINNER TABLE. See, up until recently we didn't give the kids knives. Because we had a hard enough time keeping them from killing each other with the forks. But in the interest of table manners, and also having kids that can cut their own food, I have started setting Nick's place with a knife. And Nathan noticed.

Tonight we threw caution to the wind and gave Nate a knife. We had to take it away once because he was playing with it, dancing his fork and knife together on his plate and letting them have some sort of conversation with each other until he knocked over his milk. But when he got it back he started using it. We had to teach him to use his fork to hold the food while he cut it, because he kept aiming for his fingers. But he learned how to cut up beets very well.