Hi Dinosaur!

Matthew has been developing quite an imagination over the past few months which also includes increased fears - both aspects of this evolving personality are interesting. We are sort of winging it on how to deal with this stuff.

I love the imagination side of things. I had a crazy imagination as a kid. I mean I can vividly remember the stories I made up in my head and really that imagination carried me through the some times troublesome family times I experienced. I would imagine being an Olympic swimmer and I swear it made me swim with reckless abandon, I was even kind of good for awhile back in the day. I would imagine I had horses and a whole stable in my back yard. In fact, the back yard was a place I imagined many things. I rarely watched TV so mostly I was left to my imagination both by myself and with my little friends down the street, Monica and Lara. One particular memory that stands out from when we were still living in Upstate NY and I was about 4. I thought that when I went to bed, my family took off their human suits and became gorillas. SO I asked my mom one morning if I could check to see if she was wearing a mask. She was not, thankfully (pfeww I knew you are wiping your brow to find this out!)

Matthew suddenly sees dinosaurs everywhere in our house. He does not like to go into the basement without one of us present because there are dinosaurs down there. Sometimes there are nice ones and other times they are mean. The mean ones are scary. In his room at night he will tell me 'Mommy there is a dinosaur in here." So I ask if it is nice or mean - if he says mean I scare the dinosaur out of the room and tell him I chased it away and locked the front door. Then he will tell me that he is sleeping with a nice dinosaur.He woke up the other morning and out of blue said "I slept with a nice dinosaur all night momma!"

This morning we were playing before leaving for work and he wanted one of his Bob the Builder characters from downstairs. He said "Mommy I go get them. You stay here and play. I be RIGHT back." So I waited and I heard him calling as he went down the stairs "Hi Dinosaur. Hi nice dinosaur. I just here for my Dizzy." It was just cute and I know if he wants to he can conquer the fears. Some times we run and chase the mean dinosaurs away and than a nice one will appear. Overall, I just play into the dinosaur game because he likes being both scared and protected by his imaginary dinosaur friends. Whether that is right or wrong, I figure it is what it is and I am doing the best I can.

On a different note, the past few months, Matthew has taken to memorizing whole books or portions of books and spouting out the random lines from them. Like some pint sized comedian, he will lurch around shrieking "swab the decks" or "my what fetching garments!" (all from a book we checked and rechecked out from the library called Henry & the Buccaneer Bunnies.) He even read a book backwards to himself the other day. It made me laugh but also it amazes me that this little person who was so helpless seemingly just moments ago (has it really been TWO whole years?!?!) can suddenly look at the picture and remember the exact words on the page. He also more frequently asks what something says and asks that I point at the word while I tell him what the word says. I am getting the sense that Matthew would like to unlock the secret to reading so he can do it by himself even though he still likes Mommy to read to him as well.

There is a negative to this line memorization thing. This whole swab the decks thing has gotten out of hand! While it was kind of endearing at first, he has started doing it at people, in particular, the kids from daycare, his little friends. Ekk. He shrieks in their faces and adds to that particular line other lines that make it even more menacing. We have taken to telling him that he can say the lines to us at home but he should not/cannot yell them to people repeatedly all day long (poor Kelly... sorry!)

I am glad for his love of reading, that he is so bound to books & reading and loves books dearly (again sorry Kell, I know he would make you read all day if he could...) He gets hung up on rips in books from the library - repeatedly asking why and who did that to the book! But good lord, why can't he remember the lines from sweet books like Good Night Moon (ack what am I saying... this is by far and away my least favorite children's book on the planet - I know I am probably the only human on the planet who thinks this but OY I do not look forward to reading that one again!) or Barnyard Dance or Guess How Much I Love You???

SO go swab the decks till ya come to yer senses mateys!

Building a Dinosaur

I live in a small town that has a small mall. The small mall does not have much but it has what it has so you have to kind of go with it and deal with the fact that it is a small mall without much in it... And with that exciting and very deep thought, onward...

Yesterday, there was the grand opening for Build A Bear at our small mall. Guess who decided it would be a grand idea to take her 2.5 year old child to said Build A Bear for the grand opening (and to use the 20% off coupon Shades of Gray gave us)!? Oh, yeah that would be me.

Around 5:40p we strolled into MASS CHAOS! Children and parents and bears OH MY GAWD!!!!! There was fluff everywhere and small children crying and OH THANK goodness Lilly and her parents were in front of us in line because Matthew so would have melted down. The line took forever and we stood and looked at the wall of animals for what seemed like hours (not really but I was holding Matthew and arm hurts today like I lifted a 35 lb weight for an hour so there.) In all seriousness, I know Lilly was there but I think Matthew would have been good anyway because he was SO excited to make a dinosaur.

He is a bit obsessed with these creatures right now. He likes us to pretend to be dinosaurs and I think mostly for the heart pounding fear factor. He loves when we pretend we do not hear him say "be a dinosaur, mommy" and then I stroll up and ROARRRR at him loudly. He shrieks with delight and then asks for more. It is actually a lot of fun and I would be a dinosaur 24/7 if it kept my boy as happy as that moment when he screams and laughs out loud.

Eh-hmmm, where was I... ah yes so he told us on the drive over that he would be making a dinosaur. We looked at the creatures on the wall and I asked if he wanted to make a monkey or a turtle - NOPE a dinosaur, mommy. So we picked out the un-stuffed triceratops. Matthew was a bit confused by this. We said he is deflated but we will fill him with stuff and love and then he will be squishy. Jeez, the things you come up with as parents... And so we waited and Matthew watched. He liked the voice machine even though we did not get the dinosaur a voice. He liked the roaring noise the best - go figure. We finally made it to the part where you pick the heart and rub it all over and step on the peddle to stuff the bear. I did not bring a camera because let's face it it was chaos already why add to that but the look on his face was priceless. He just stared at the girl making his dinosaur come to life with eyes the size of saucers. Then we washed our dinosaur and picked out some "stuff".

Have you been in one of those Build A Bear stores lately? They have so much SHIT. I mean seriously. You can buy your child's stuffed love of his/her life every imaginable thing out there from boxers to a wardrobe to sleep bags to pretend iPod/iPod carriers to costumes for Halloween! My goodness. Matthew's dinosaur ended up with a Coats fleece jacket (Matthew wanted a football jersey but I opted for the jacket because it was less and he did not know the difference), a football and a baby triceratops. I was amazed the mass amount of items that you could buy for a child's stuffed animal.

Oh and Matthew made his birth certificate for his newly made dinosaur. We kept asking him what he wanted to name it - he rattled off a bunch of odd things here and there. But we finally settled on the thing he kept saying repeatedly between all of the other stuff. Kevin & Matthew did this while I waited in the long line to check out. SO his dinosaur is named 'Con'. As in ex Con. Matthew kept saying this over and over - now if I had sat down to name this stuffed animal I would have spelled it Khan as in Ghengis Khan not Con like well you get the idea. Whatever, he renamed it an hour later - Tong so who cares...So that is how we built a dinosaur.

One may think we are insane for doing this activity with our child and it was mass hysteria in this place but this was actually a pleasurable experience. And I am happy to report that Tong, Khan, and/or Con slept well in his new home with his new friend, Matthew, last night. Tong/Khan/Con additionally went potty and had breakfast with Matthew this morning so we are all set in the dinosaur department... for now!