ESTEBAN JOEL: AMAZING BOY BLOGGER: Cool Tee Shirts and Bad Haircuts

A funny thing happened on the way to the barber shop... Actually a funny thing happened while Mommy was cutting my hair at home... but we'll come back to that a little later. I have a more pressing matter to deal with. Something that I've had on the tip of my tongue for quite some time and I just can't seem to spit it out... literally.

I'm about to start talking and I haven't decided exactly what my first words are going to be. Mommy and Daddy are both trying really hard to make sure that the first acutal sentence that I blurt out will be meaningful so they are constantly repeating key phrases to me. Yo te amo... Buenos dias Mama... Gracias Papa... and so on. Don't get me wrong, I talk... well, I say 6 words if you want me to be completely honest with you.

1) Mama
2) Papa
3) Lola (the cat)
4) Mas
5) Galleta
6) Three!... (only when preceded by Mommy saying: One... Two...)

That's about it. That is the complete and unabridged version of the Esteban vocabulary. Not too bad of a menu of words. The way I see it, if I never learn another word the rest of my life I'll at least be able to ask my parents for more crackers (3 to be exact) and then ask the cat to join me.

But seriously... Since both of my parents are now actively campaigning to make sure that their chosen sentence makes it as my first official words... It suddenly occured to me the immense power that I, once again, have over them. I completely control them now. They don't mind that I prattle off gibberish for 6 hours at a time. They sit there patiently and listen closely for any glimps of a coherent sentence... any sentence. I need to choose these first words very carefully. As I've said before; with great power comes great responsibility. If I say something like: Te quiero un monton, Mama. My Mommy would die of happiness and go to Puerto Rican Heaven (which Daddy insists resembles Disney World... only louder and none of the rides work). But if I were to say something like: More quesadillas please then we'd lose Daddy to a brain embolism for sure.

I think I'm going to go with something completely random. Maybe something like: Peas make me nervous or Frank Burns eats Worms. That'll make them really crazy. They'll spend days analyzing and theorizing in order to find the true meaning. What is it about the peas that frightens him? Is it the shape or the color? I can already hear them. In the end I'll probably say something short and sweet like: Hello Mama or Gracias Papa. Either way, Mommy and Daddy will treat it like the greatest phrase ever uttered by a toddler with 8 pounds of poop in his diaper. And that's what I like about these two. They're so new at this that they still treat every situation as a monumental epic event. I don't know how much longer this will last but I plan to milk it for all it's worth.

Funny story about my new haircut. Mommy decides, while Daddy is away on a business trip, that she is going to cut my hair in the bathroom at home. She felt that this was a good idea for two reasons: 1) She cuts Daddy's hair (whats left of it) at home all the time. 2) I'm a patient kid. I'll sit still if you give me something to hold or eat. That's how Mommy trims my nails and inspects my ears and nose. Everything was set for a succesful trim. I was seated comfortably on the bathroom counter top playing with my toothbrush. Mommy was clipping away at my curls and was feeling so cocky that she pulled out the electric clippers to tidy up the back of my neck. That's when the cat decided to jump up onto the counter with us. I jerked my head around... Mommy jumped... and before I knew what was happening, there was a 6 inch trench dug into the side of my head. Sh ehad no choice... she had to shave my head completely and start over.

Mommy cried and sent Daddy a picture of my new shaved head to his phone and he laughed for 17 minutes straight while sitting on the floor at the Dallas Airport. He said he loved it because we now had matching haircuts. Eventually Mommy calmed down and began to laugh as well. Great. Everyone laugh at the short, bald kid. Very nice.