Beige Is My Favorite Color

One of the best things about Gabe being conversationally fluent in English is, well, the conversations. Finally, we've progressed to the point where I'm doing more than endlessly repeating words so that he can learn them and we can actually have some back and forth communication. And often it's awesome.

This afternoon, for instance, I sat down with Gabe at the dining room table (which is unsuitable for eating at now thanks to the inundation of every surface with play-doh and play-doh accessories) to play with his play-doh. We opened the containers which, not surprisingly, all contained roughly the same color--a kind of mottled light brown thanks to the colors not ENTIRELY mixing yet. Every day he complains that he wants different colors, and then, every day, when two colors are opened, he proceeds to mix them together without a second thought. Some day he'll put the elimination of his color options together with his careless mixing--and, frankly, that's a day I'm eagerly awaiting.

Anyway, Gabe is very familiar with the color beige thanks to the show Imagination Movers. On the show, there is a character named Knit Knots. His only goal in life is to be incredibly boring (he's actually a pretty amusing character, some times, as in the time he decided to make a music CD of very boring music. The music was a single note played on a tuba that he modified so it only COULD play one note--B flat. "The "b" is for boring, and the flat makes it EXTRA boring." For some reason, that made me laugh. Probably because my standards for humor, thanks to nothing but preschool programming, have sunk to record depths). As part of that goal, he only wears beige clothes. ENTIRELY beige clothes. The movers even have a song about creating the proper beige color, and in the song, as they are mixing colors, they announce that their end goal is to make "boring, boring, boring, boring beige."

Because of this, Gabe has stopped calling beige, "beige" and, instead, has renamed it "boring." When identifying the color of something light brown in or around our house, he'll point at it and say "That's boring!"

So, right after I got the play-doh out, I identified it as beige and then, rather off-handedly, I added, "Beige is boring, isn't it."

Then, in a rather stern voice that pulled off an admonishing tone that I was rather surprised he accomplished so well, Gabe corrected me by saying, "Beige is a NICE color, Daddy."

I quickly corrected myself by saying, "Some people really like beige, you're right."

"Beige is my FAVORITE color," he declared.

Hmm. This one loses a little something in the retelling. It struck me as very funny at the time. Perhaps I'm just a little punchy today. Norah was up with her teeth until about midnight last night then woke up from 4:00-6:30 this morning, slept for a little over an hour, then was in a pretty god-awful mood the rest of the morning. But neither Libby nor I got much sleep last night (contrary to what she'd have you believe, SHE was the one that got more sleep last night because I stayed up with Norah until midnight--so I do my part, sometimes anyway).

I forgot that Gabe stole (supposedly was "given," but I have my doubts considering his sticky fingers) a tub of orange by Finn Wednesday night, which he opened up and added to the beige melange. Thus the extra color. I'm not entirely sure where he got his paint mixing information, but it seems a bit faulty, too (though he MIGHT have been talking about mixing all of the colors together to make beige, because that's what they did in the song on Movers). And, as usual, Norah was close at hand. Her favorite thing to do right now is to sit at Gabe's feet while he plays at the table. I'm not sure what I should read into that, but I'm pretty sure there will be no hint of "subservience" in her personality as it develops. She's pretty firmly established herself as the boss of our household and seems all too comfortable with that role. Also, at the end there, if anyone has any idea what he's saying, I'd love to hear it. I think I made out "white and boring makes green," but that's about it.