Mine.

Mateo has finally passed the "no" stage in his development. We had a week of few "no" reponses and a couple "ya!" responses before we entered the "mine" stage.

Everything is "mine" to Mateo.

And, as with "no," hearing "mine" all the time gets old fast. Real fast.

I sent my husband and Mateo out yesterday so I could spend time working on my school work (I managed to do little school work and much writing and reading; I'm bad). I told my husband to get Mateo fall PJs: long sleeve, long pants. The weather is turning where we live from super hot to drab and dreary fairly quickly, so I need to get a nice stock of PJs for the boy.

I told him to try Old Navy, although last weekend they didn't have any long sleeve, long pants PJs out, and if not there, the Carter's. I told him what sizes to get at each store. I didn't tell tell him what color scheme, or what decals or what patterns because they are PJs and Mateo isn't making a fashion statement in his crib.

An hour or so later, both my men came back home.

"Show Momma what you got!!!" my husband was saying as he walked in the door.

He let Mateo out of the stroller, and Mateo ran into our bedroom wielding a minature broom and dustpan.

Hmmm...certainly not PJs, I thought, but okay.

"Did you get PJs?" I asked after admiring Mateo's fabulous Dirt Devil broom and dustpan.

"Oh, well. I got one from Carter's, but I thought you wouldn't like it, so I only bought one pair," he told me.

Sigh.

I got up and looked at the PJs, which was a simple pants and long sleeve set with a bulldog on the front.

"It's fine," I said.

"Are you SURE?" he asked.

"It's just like his shorts PJs from Carter's, so yeah, it's fine."

I noticed something else in the bag. I pulled it out, and it was a zip-up hooded sweatshirt. I can't tell you how many hooded sweatshirts Mateo has, and I can't even begin to explain my husband's affinity towards the hooded sweatshirt, but my husband seems to think he and Mateo need a sweatshirt for all occasions and in all colors.

"It was 70% off!" my husband exclaimed like he was a fabulous bargain shopper.

I thought: Yes, but he needs PJs not another hooded sweatshirt....

I let it go because the sweatshirt was only $7 bucks, even though that's $7 bucks we could have used towards PJs, but that's OKAY. (Notice how I'm still trying to convince myself of this?)

During our conversation, Mateo was happily running around with his broom and dustpan, "sweeping" the Sophia hair bunnies from out of crevices, and screaming "MINE!!!" every time Zoe tried to get to the broom.

Mateo loves brooms and mops. And I guess dust pans now. I've been looking for a small broom for him for some time now, but never managed to find one. However, I realized, making your child happy comes at a cost. And that cost is hearing "MINE" every 5 seconds, which soon moved onto smacking Zoe every chance he got.

There's only so much cat abuse I can take, I tell you. And Zoe is too simple to have these same sort of feelings.

This morning I finally had to be the mean parent and take the broom, and soon after, the dust pan way from him. After our simple Zoe suffered a whack to the face, which we both told him no, not to do that, you have to be nice to Zoe, etc., and he reacted with a complete fake crying session for, oh, about 30 seconds. Then he turned around and started sweeping at Zoe, hitting her feet with the broom.

That's when I had enough. I took the broom away, he flipped out, screamed "mine" at me, refused to look at me for, oh, about 30 seconds (I think that's how long his attention span is), and then picked up the dust pan. He then began to go after Zoe with it, trying to hit her, so I removed the dust pan from his hand. Repeat the reaction about the broom, including being ignored, and then he was off to chat to no one on his play telephone.

What I would like to point out is this: Why did either one of us think giving him a broom was a good idea? I can't blame my husband on this one because I have looked for one myself. But a heavy wooden stick topped with tightly bound together synthetic broom stalk? What were we thinking.

I know what I was thinking all morning while we watched Mateo torment Zoe: Why did he have to find a minature kid's broom and dust pan? Why oh why?

(We've put it away, and I jokingly said Mateo will be presented with again when he's 10, and we'll tell him all about his hours spent with his most favorite toy, ever.)