If you don't have anything nice to say...

First off, let me just say that I have very good intentions of writing a Christmas recap post one day very soon (maybe even later today...), but in the meantime, I just had to jot this one down.

True to the notion that Owen teaches me just as much (if not more) than I teach him on a daily basis — something I have observed over the past two and half years — I realized today that I need to keep my verbal road rage in check...and fast.

Shortly after leaving the library this morning (I won't even go into the humiliating tantrum state in which we actually exited the building), I received a phone call from Ryan (on my new iPhone...woot!)

(Ok, this post is already starting to exceed the maximum number of allowable parenthetic statements, so I apologize in advance for that.)

Anyways, I received a phone call and while answering it, I nearly missed a stop sign, causing me to slam on my brakes to avoid running through a four-way intersection, which, thankfully was empty in all three other directions. I think I said something like, "whoa!" as I did it and then answered, "hello." Owen, on the other hand, responded to the abrupt stop with — and I quote, "Are you kidding me?"

I immediately asked Ryan to hold on and I turned around to ask Owen to repeat what he just said. (I wasn't sure that I had heard it correctly.) He wouldn't repeat it, but just smiled at me with a huge grin and giggled a little — which, incidentally, made me completely forget how angry I was with him only moments before for the major library exiting meltdown.

But I am fairly certain that that is what he said. Mostly because on our way to the library, I got stuck behind a semi-truck that, in addition to being in all the wrong lanes (i.e., going straight in more than one turn-only lane), was going sooooooooo slow! And I'm pretty sure I may have said something like (ok, exactly) what Owen said now. "Are you kidding me?" After that earlier incident, Owen spent the rest of the drive talking about "passing the truck" and "Mommy drive really fast," and "I don't want to do that again," -type statements. Needless to say, it obviously left an impression on him. And one that I'm not proud of.

I am grateful, though, that the only thing I said was, "Are you kidding me?" I have been known to say worse. And after Ryan and I finished laughing hysterically at our little imitator, it occurred to me how grateful  I am for the reminder to keep my anger, and especially my comments, in check. Stat. Thanks for that one, little buddy. Lesson learned.