Teenager?

Since when did my 7-year-old son turn 14? Apparently he has aged over the past few weeks because he has developed the smart mouth and sarcastic reasoning that usually comes with teenagerdom.

Last night, I asked him to feed the dog. "Noah, feed the dog, please."

"What does that mean?"

"It means FEED THE DOG! NOW DO IT!"

"What's a dog?"

"You're gonna be a dog and sleep in her corner while I let her sleep in your bed if you don't FEED THE DOG NOW!"

He fed the dog.

This morning, I was putting away clothes in my bedroom and I heard them arguing in the living room. Zoe appeared in my room to say, " Mommy, Noah called me a baby."

"Zoe, you know you are not a baby. Don't worry about what Noah says, but tell him to stop saying mean words."

"NOAH! Mommy say don't say, 'baby' NO MORE!"

And then I hear Noah singing, "Ba-by! Baaaa-by. Stupid, stupid, DUMB! Stu-pid, baaa-by, baby, baby DUMB!"

All the words I have told him repeatedly not to say because they aren't nice.

I walked in the living room and said very matter-of-factly, "You've lost your DSi for three days. We will talk about it again on Thursday!"

Noah looked shocked.

And then he started crying. "WHY!?"

"Because I heard you in here being nasty to your sister. Why would you be so nasty to her?"

**still crying** "Because she was bugging me!"

"Well, Noah, that is no excuse to be mean to her! Calling her stupid, dumb and a baby is incredibly mean!"

And then came the moment where he changed from seven-year-old to fourteen-year-old. In an instant, he dried up the tears and I saw him put on his smug face and then he said:

"I wasn't calling HER those names. I was just saying them to myself."

"No, you weren't! You were singing it and calling her those names."

"No I WASN'T I was just singing quietly to myself."

"Well, your 'quietly to yourself' was loud enough for me to hear it in the back of the house! Just don't say those words at all! You know they are not nice!"

**pause**

"Well, what if we see a baby out in a store or something? Then, I can't say the word, 'baby' !?"

"And now you've lost the DSi for a week."

And the thing is, he didn't seem that upset about it. He got up and went in his room and started happily playing.

And then he came in the living room and said, " I'm bored. Not having a DSi is DUMB!!"

As I type this, he is sitting at my kitchen table writing, "I will not call Zoe a baby" fifty times. Or at least he is sitting at the kitchen table crying how unfair it is that I have told him he can't get up until he is done. He hates to write. And he also needs practice on his terrible handwriting.

Two birds- one stone.

Yeah me.

Now where can I get some chocolate and wine at 10:30 am?