If you've ever happened to encounter a mother in the presence of an adorable baby, you may have witnessed the ridiculous, cooing, nonsensical language that comes naturally to many women and is almost universally loved by babies. It's hard not to coo and wax lyrical about each tiny feature when faced with an adorable little face, and the fact that it is rewarded with sweet toothless smiles only reinforces the behavior.

Unfortunately, while Landis has grown from a tiny infant to a tall and very verbal toddler, I have not yet stopped cooing over each of his adorable features, especially his very blue eyes. As Landis was hard at work building a train track, I kept talking about his big blue eyes, and just how cute they are, and how nice it was that he had gotten blue eyes just like Daddy. I thought that he wasn't really listening, but he got up, ran across the room and tugged on Goat's pants. Goat turned around, and Landis said, "Daddy, thank you for my eyes."

We just about fell over laughing at that one, but I think I'm going to have to stop telling Landi how cute he is quite so often. I don't want to raise a vain little boy - even if he is the cutest toddler in the world!