It's been too long since I've written about my boys! But it's only because I've been terribly busy living, and I can't complain about that. In the meantime, though, these boys are exploding in their abilities, their wills, their hearts, and of course, their sheer boyness. I am truly outnumbered in this household.The dink is super-into imaginary play these days. He's constantly asking me to refer to him as Bob the Builder, Elmo, Mickey, kitty cat, lion...you name it. And the rest of the household is supposed to take on corresponding names. A couple favorites have been when J comes home from work and the dink yells "Hey, Goofy!" And another night, we were repeatedly corrected for a two-hour period by the dink if either J or I called Keane anything but "Jimmy," the inquisitive animal-loving character from the animated portion of Wild Kratts.
And then comes the ever-important "play." We build forts. We build roads. We hide from bad guys. We run away from Keane. We get in trouble for pretending to shoot a gun because it upsets Mommy and she doesn't understand how we ever learned about this gun-shooting and bad-guy concept in the first place... But the dink lives for his play. I used to say that he would jump off the roof of the house for a mere three M&Ms. Now, the lengths that he'll go to to negotiate, beg for, and demand to "play a few more minutes" are simply staggering. My favorite play is when we pretend that we're going to make soup, and he goes to the grocery store for all the vegetables we need, but at some point in the process he stops in tracks and remembers--oh no--that he forgot his coupons!...Classic.
He's just trying to figure out this crazy world, that dink, and the little lives we manage in it. You can see his little face trying to sort out things he's seen or experienced, framing them in a question to make sure he understood it right: "Mom, sometimes blueberries cost too much, so we have to go to a different store?" That's right, dink. Or, we just don't buy them. "Mom, when I leave school, my friends will miss me?" Of course they will, dink. "Mom, juice doesn't help you grow. Only water and milk help you grow...right?" Amen to that.And as much as the dink has his crazy fits of nonsense and misplaced anger, he has crazy fits of love and sentimentality. He's into spontaneous hugs, pats, pets, and declarations of love in which he must have the final word. So he'll randomly say, "Mom, I love you." or "Mom, you're my best friend." And if I reply "I love you, too." He'll say "No! I said I love YOU!" At which moment an argument ensues if you try to force the point. And arguing about love, while it doesn't seem entirely unnatural, is surely unwarranted with a three-year-old. So I just let it stand. "Thank you, dink." Can't wait till he and K fight about their love. :) One day!
