Power of Persuasion

A compilation of a few of the interesting things that have come out of Buddy's mouth in recent weeks.

My sister-in-law, Tahsha was over at our house. Buddy has always had a *thing* for her and always wants her to play with him. She wanted to hang out with the adults and kept trying to get him to play by himself. That is until he matter of factly told her to just "suck it up" and play with him.

At his annual check-up with the doctor, the nurse gave him his first ever eye exam. He had to cover his eye with an eye patch and tell the nurse if the object she was pointing at was an umbrella, house, or apple. When the nurse got to the bottom row, I noticed Buddy had taken the eye patch off and was reading the objects with both eyes. I scolded him and told him he needed to look with only one eye. He said, "If I'm going to see those pictures I'm going to either need to take the eye patch off, or move a little closer."

Then Buddy and I later had dentist appointments. After last time's visit I thought it would be easiest it we got our teeth cleaned simultaneously. I've since changed my mind. Let me explain. While the hygienist had control of my mouth -- and I was unable to defend myself -- I could hear Buddy in the next room over telling his hygienist all sorts of things about our family that were totally untrue. Then the dentist went in to look at his teeth and Buddy spent a solid ten minutes trying to persuade him that he needed gold teeth like a pirate. Buddy wouldn't let the poor man move onto the next patient until that request was honored. The dentist has six children and one more on the way, so he's very accustomed to accommodating children. But Buddy had him flustered to the point that he promised him next time he'd find a way to get Buddy a gold tooth. When he came in to see me he said the only other person that's ever asked for a gold tooth (and been dead serious), he encouraged to get a grill. So I guess we could always go that route. Since my heart was softened to men with a grill during last season's "So You Think You Can Dance."

It's a rather common occurrence that someone says to me, "Do you ever wonder what Buddy is going to be like as a teenager?" Although I am sort of curious, I actually have a pretty good idea of what he'll be like because he's practically a teenager now. At least he's got the drama and mouth of an adolescent. One day Buddy came out of time out and totally calmly said,"How would you feel if I went and lived with another family?"

And then one of my all-time most favorite Buddy comments was when I was taking him around to a bunch of errands for Primary. He asked where we were going, I gave him the run-down and he let out the world's biggest sigh and said in a huff, "Why are you ALWAYS working on Sharing Time." (So it's not always me that feels like that.)