April 1st, 2012 by Busy Mommy

Hey, I’m just passing on what I’ve been told by this little guy: I haven’t gotten a chance to mention it, but Nolan and the phrase “compost pile” the last 6 weeks is akin to…..ducks on water, or Ben and music. Not only does he use the phrase randomly at odd times in sentences that have nothing whatsoever to do with compost piles, but he whips out the phrase even more often whenever we have company- I think he thinks it’s impressive to people (ie…..friend says to nolan: “how are you nolan?” nolan smiles and says: “uhhhh….in…um….compost pile!”

He replaces words- many words- in songs with it.  The more riled up he gets, the more he says it- “the compost pile came OVER the sea……..and a……COMPOST PILE!……I told you that I said NO COMPOST PILE……….mary had a little COMPOST PILE!! heeeeheeeheheeee”  Anything and anywhere he can make it fit, he uses it- which of course, in most all cases, the phrase totally doesn’t fit the occasion or sentence, which makes it that much funnier- to us and him since he knows it.

Now he’s gone the next step and as of yesterday, Nolan has decided that he IS compost pile.  “I’m compost pile.”  “My name is…..compost pile!!”  Perhaps this started when just a few days ago Nolan set a record for the number of times he said “compost pile” in a span of a few hours when our good friend Desiree was over.  She tried to teach him a song that started “my name is No-lan” which he was supposed to then repeat, but he said instead of course: “my name is…Compost-Pile!!”  We gave up after that.

The funny thing about all this is that you’d think we make a big deal about composting and talk about it a lot or something but we totally don’t.  While we do have a real compost pile, we aren’t even actively composting at the moment (until we figure out a way to do it that keeps the varmints out).  However, we did recently have a VERY large load of woodchips (like probably 12-15 cubic yards worth) delivered from a tree trimming company- I think it was this huge pile of chips sitting in our driveway for a time that Nolan was climbing up and around for awhile that made an impression on him and that he had started referring to as the compost pile.  So I think that’s where it all began.

I wonder if he’ll remember this little “phase”?