He LOVES his "Pwezadents!"

I don't know what President Bush's approval rating has sunk to these days, but he might take comfort in this:

The other night, while sitting in his high chair, eating spaghetti, Kiddo turned to me and said, "We love our current President."

Startled, I looked up and asked, "We do?"

"Yeah!"

To clarify, I asked, "And who's our current President?"

"George W. Bush!" Pausing for a moment, he followed this up with, "I also wuv Wonald Wagon" (Ronald Reagan, of course).

Given that his FAVORITE President is Abraham Lincoln, do you think this means he's a Republican? If so, his Grandpa Martin must be so proud! :)

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I was very lax about Kiddo's bedtime over the Thanksgiving break. Consequently, he was still awake when Barbara Walters' interview with Barack and Michelle Obama aired at 9 p.m. Because he has told me that he "wuvs his Pwezadents," I thought Kiddo might enjoy watching our President-Elect on television. I didn't really expect that he'd pay much attention, but I wanted to watch too, so we settled down in Auntie's living room to watch while Kiddo played off to the side.

Well, I don't know how much he actually listened to, but here is what my little boy took from the ENTIRE interview: "Scoop the POOP!!!"

You might recall that the Obamas promised their little girls a puppy after the election was over. Being a crazy dog lady, Barbara spent a good 5 minutes or so quizzing the Obamas about this important issue. One question that she asked was basically, "Will you expect your daughters to actually take care of the dog themselves?" The Obamas answered that Malia and Sasha will absolutely be tending to their pet's needs. In fact, they will even have to "SCOOP THE POOP!" This phrase made my toddler dissolve into laughter, and until he finally fell asleep-- close to midnight (he is a wild thing when it comes to going to sleep away from home) he repeated, "SCOOP THE POOP!" and giggled several times. I believe it may have even been the first thing he said when he woke up the next morning.

I don't know about your kids, but with my little guy, the more you request that he stop doing something like this, the funnier he thinks it is. So I decided to try to ignore it in hopes that it would lose its thrill. Within a day or two, we no longer heard the phrase. Hooray! However...

Last week at the Library, he asked to play with a group of children seated around a newer toy in the Children's department. They were older and friendly, and of course responded, "Sure!" It seemed to me that Kiddo was just playing away happily, when Daddy-O came over to me and whispered, "Can you hear him? It's so bad!"

"Why, what is he doing?"

"He keeps saying, 'Scoop the POOP! Scoop the POOP!' and he won't stop."

Evidently, the other kids just kind of looked at Kiddo funny, but didn't say anything. We left shortly after that, and on the way home, I recalled that I was pretty sure I had heard these children's mothers discussing their home schooling experiences. I hope they weren't thinking, "Gee, and this is why we don't send our kids to public schools!!!"

Anyway, I know our President-Elect is actually a gifted speaker, and I would like to give Kiddo some other of his more dignified words to remember him by, but currently all I can think of is, "Yes, we can" which is really not entirely original. Any suggestions?