Snakes and Snails and Little Boy Tales

The man-cub - that's how I like to think of him now because his half-nakedness, jungle hair, and enthusiastic boyness remind me of Mogely from The Jungle Book - seems to have fully transitioned from baby to little boy.

He plays like a boy. I guess he might play like a girl, too, but he plays very differently than his sister. They both have vivid imaginations, orchestrating entire worlds of play around themselves, but he becomes the characters and acts out the world. He is Mickey Mouse flying the Toon Plane to rescue Santa from Mistletoe Mountain. He is the circus magician making bunnies disappear all over the house. He is a dog playing fetch in the aisles of Target (literally, on hands and knees, picking up the toys with his mouth). He's a football/basketball/soccer player. He's a gymnast. He's a doctor and a bear and a shark and a snake handler.

Man-cub has talked about snakes so much lately that I dreamed the other night that someone gave him TWO for his birthday. One of them was venomous and I was trying to get it away from him before it could bite him, but I was afraid to kill it because my snake-loving sister-in-law was there and I thought she would be mad at me. I really, really don't like snakes at all. I can keep my head about it if there is one in the yard, but I do not like them. Some of my most horrible nightmares are about snakes - bone-chilling, sweat-popping nightmares that tell me I need to get a handle on my stress level ASAP. That my sweet little boy child seems to be so fascinated with them right now makes me very uncomfortable. If he asks me for a snake one day, the answer will have to be, "Not while you live in my house."

On top of being a ball of frenetic energy, he is disarmingly honest and cheeky. It sometimes makes discipline difficult. I can see him being a kid who approaches punishment matter-of-factly so he can get on with his business. Case in point: This morning, he was walking around on the bed and I asked him, "Do you know what happens when you stand on the bed?" He said, "Uh-huh." I said, "What?" He said, "Time out."

I was thinking more along the lines of, "You'll fall and break your head," but I guess he wanted to be spared the lecture. He didn't have a time out. He did prove that sometimes there is more than one right answer.

Day 5 - Looking up

I struggled with this one. I couldn't decide if I should interpret it literally or figuratively. I couldn't get pictures of the literal things that came to mind and I didn't want to write about some of the figurative things. That left me flipping through the pictures on my phone for inspiration, and I found this.

Me and Luke

It's a horrible picture. It was dark and I was using the reverse camera on my iPhone in an attempt to capture Luke's expression when Mickey Mouse skated out at Disney on Ice. This is it. He was shockingly stoic. I really expected a big reaction, but this is all there was. He basically stayed in this position, with this expression on his face for the entire first half of the show. He was completely engrossed.

He loved it so much that he is still talking about it a month later. He still pretends to skate on our hardwood floors and he walks around saying, "Tick-tock, tick-tock," pretending to be the crocodile from Peter Pan (which was his favorite part). During his second blessing at supper the other night (he usually says three or four), he said, "Thank you Jesus, Mickey Mouse state (skate)..." and some other things we've done recently. He just started saying real prayers (meaning, not the kid ones we teach them in order to establish the habit) and he's obviously following my model of thanking God for the things we did each day. Putting him to bed at night has become an excellent prayer time for me because he insists that I pray continuously until he falls asleep. He likes to hear his day in review but he usually falls asleep when I get to the parts that are my prayers for him. That's okay, I just keep praying out loud until I'm finished.

Is that a baby vampire?

Crayon Connoisseur

Nah, it's just Luke eating crayons again. He goes through our crayon box like it's a Whitman Sampler- taking a bite and spitting it out, then carefully selecting another, taking a bite, and spitting it out. I don't know if we have any crayons left with tips on them. I've asked him if Crayola started secretly flavoring their crayons, but he just looked at me mischievously and ate another one. He seems to have a preference for orange.

I took another approach and explained to him that stores actually sell watercolor paints and we can get him some if that's the medium he prefers. He responded by picking a new color, biting off the end, swishing it in his mouth, and dripping brightly colored drool on his coloring page. I guess he likes to make his own watercolor paint.

I guess we'll keep using washable crayons and brushing colored bits out of his teeth.