Is Mal Becoming a Mini-Me?

 If it's 9:00 AM, Malcolm is dressed for the day.

For most of Mal's life, he's pretty much been happy doing his thing in a diaper or his underpants. Especially having been home so much the past year, he was getting used to not being dressed.

For whatever reason, during the past couple of months, he's decided that he gets dressed at 9:00. If he wakes up at 8:15, he'll watch videos or chat for a while, then hop out of bed at 9 and put on his clothes. If he wakes up after 9:00, the first thing he does is get dressed.

I've never made him get dressed unless we were going somewhere. I liked it better when he was clothed, but since that's just my own preference, I never pressed it. Now it's his idea, and it's cool that it just happened organically.

Also, he's taken up one of my favorite pastimes: religiously studying lyrics and "practicing" singing songs until he has them memorized. In this case, it's the "Encanto" soundtrack. He is super proud of himself when he can sing a few of the songs all the way through.

The other day, we got into the car, and he asked, "Who needs a radio when you have me?!"

What a great kid!

Another thing Mal is doing lately is getting his feelings VERY hurt when I don't agree with him, then bargaining with me to say that I DO agree with him. One example, going back to the lyrics thing: A couple of the printed lyrics from "Encanto" are wrong. There's one part where Maribel sings, "Well, I gotta go; the life of a Madrigal!" But the lyrics say something like, "Well, I've got a good life of a Madrigal" or something that doesn't really make sense in the context of the song. (Another one, where the townspeople sing, "We're only up the road," they have, "We're rolling up the road." What? No, they aren't. Good grief.)

Having memorized everything so carefully (as well as taking incredibly seriously ANYTHING that's in writing), Mal is pretty invested in the incorrect lyrics. I told him he can sing them however he wants, but he wants me to agree that the wrong lyrics are right. And I can't, because they're not, and I don't lie to my kids. Anyway, he cried and stayed in his closed room for an hour, after threatening to do so if I didn't agree. When I still didn't agree, he was pretty disappointed. 

All of this to say that life with Mal continues to be an adventure. I never imagined I'd have such a young kiddo when I was closing in on 50, but it's such a blessing. Love this child.