"Daddy, You Smell Like Stink."

"You smell like ass."  

Sorry? (there's no way we heard what it sounded like.)

"You smell like ass."

What? (crap. all. authority. gone. We're laughing uncontrollably. Husband is actually on the floor screeching with laughter.)

"You smell like.. like.. gas. Like stink. Like GAS."

Here's the problem: at about three months of age, I realized that Kiddo #1 is smarter than I am.  Now that she's almost 4, it's all I can do not to wave the white flag of defeat on the daily.  

When Husband returned, yesterday, from cutting the lawn, he smelled like outside, like gasoline, and like sweat; in short, he smelled like stink. But when she said, "Daddy you smell like stink. You smell like ass," I nearly fell off my chair. It was shocking, yes, and it was inappropriate, yes, but when we asked her two other times what she said and she was able to figure out why we were laughing our ... butts off... and change the word? That's kinda a big deal, I think. 

In fact, I'm in big trouble when she turns 13.

What I'm learning as she grows is that she's figured out if she can crack me up, she's probably going to get less punishment than if she doesn't at least attempt to make me laugh. Sometimes the effort is abysmal, and she gets extra time out for sassing. But sometimes, like the one above, Husband and I are crying laughing and I can see her little brain working and recording her version of how she just 'won' this battle. It's a dangerous game I'm teaching her (for me anyway, because I might lose all my credibility if she gets away with too much), but at the same time, I think she might be on to something.

She's figured out that to calm the baby, all she has to do is sing to him (music soothes our cranky baby) and to calm the parents, all she has to do is catch us off guard (laughter soothes the cranky momma).  In the grand scheme of life, I think these skills, (figuring out how to make the best of a bad situation, and reading people) have to be super pluses.  Better than knowing self-defense as far as I'm concerned.  Or at least comparable.

When the hero tells a hilarious joke that makes the giant, scary thug person crack a smile, you know the hero isn't gonna get his/her lights punched out anymore. It's a fact of cinema, literature and music. I'm sure it's a fact of the Internet too, or it will be once I post this, anyways. 

I guess on the extreme end, you could see this as learning to manipulate and placate to get what she wants. But, I assure you, I'm not raising the extreme-end kid. I'm trying to teach both Kiddo #1 and #2 how to be assertive, get their needs met, and still be good, positive people in our society.  Everybody likes it when someone can make them laugh.

So, yesterday, Kiddo #1 got "the benefit of the doubt" that maybe she'd been saying GAS the whole time. And heck, maybe she was. Maybe I'm just being Proud, Delusional Momma in thinking my child could come up with something like that.  

But tonight, when she came around the corner and said, "We don't put fingers in our noses, Momma," my goose was cooked.  With a hilarious smirk on her face and her eyebrows raised just enough to let me know she'd caught me, I chuckled and shook my head. And when she pushed it too far a couple seconds later, I was finally able to bust out laughing; after her wee ears were safely out of distance in her room, in time out, that is.  

(not that I pick my nose or anything.)