P-Potatoes

"What are these called?"

"Tomatoes." He answered me dutifully, like the good three-year old he was.

"What color are they?"

"Red."

"Good job!" I love asking him his colors. I realize it's silly but I think of the world in terms of colors and smells. Therefore, I believe naming colors to be important. Alright, and maybe I just like to hear how smart he is.

I walked over to the garbage can to throw something out and he stretched on his tip-toes to reach a small green tomato on the counter, the last of the homegrown tomatoes my mother collected from our garden before the first frost in hopes it would ripen indoors.

"What this? It not red." He held it out to me to examine for myself. After I went into far too much detail about the tomato growth patterns, he lost interest and I put the green tomato back.

Grandma called to him from the other room. "Honey, do you want a potato with your meal?"

We were prepping dinner and grandma liked to cover all her bases. When he shook his head I told her I wanted one. His little body held still for a second to consider his options. With a tiny finger on his lips, he answered gramndma again.

"I want tomato!" He chased into the dinning room where she was taking the cooked potatoes from the microwave.

"Honey, these are potatoes."

"Tomatoes," he insisted.

"Puh," grandma pronounced clearly at him. "It starts with a 'p'. Puh-tato."

"Tomato." He was very firm in what he knew, apparently.

To show him the difference, I grabbed the green tomato off the counter and showed him. "You want a tomato? Like this one?" I teased him by pretending to walk toward his dinner plate.

"No! No, I don' want. I want tomato."

"But this is a tomato." I made another pretend pass at his plate with the offending green fruit, his face a cross between giggles and horror.

"No!"

"You must want the tomato not potato. I'll just out this on your pl-"

Giggles lost the battle and he yelled in horror. "No! I don' want the tomato. No! Don' want!" This was not a happy child and this was not an inside voice. This was the beginnings of a genuine fit, which made grandpa not happy, with a time out ensuing.

For my three-year-old nephew, not me.

I was the adult in the relationship, right? I felt a flashback to when I was younger and got my brothers unfairly in trouble.

Lesson learned: I may have grown up but the mischievious little sister in me still shows up from time to time. Gotta work on that.