Sometimes I wish I thought everything is as mind-blowing as Alex does. He gets excited about such little things, no matter how many times he’s seen them or done them or eaten them, and the enthusiasm is often catching…but I still don’t think everything is amazing enough for my eyes to light up and for my feet to do a happy dance just because I’m getting a snack-size bag of Chips Ahoy.
Lately, there isn’t enough joy in the world to match what Alex experiences when he sees or hears anything having to do with Thomas the Tank Engine. He’s two-and-a-half years old and he knows the names of 99% of the characters, which is impressive because there are quite a few. Just today he was telling me about Bertie the Bus and Mavis and pointing out Harold and Duck. For those of you who are familiar with Thomas and Friends, you know that Duck is not one of the major engines, but Alex knows who he is anyway. I can only keep the engines straight because of their colors, so I assumed Alex was using their colors too, but he has a coloring book full of them not colored in and he can STILL tell me who everyone is!
My son is ecstatic whenever he comes across Mickey Mouse, and every duck is Donald Duck (he always has to stop and say, “Quack, quack,” at that point). We have seen the Disney version of The Three Musketeers so many times that the poor DVD is badly scratched and Alex knows to have something to hold on to once the music starts; he pretends it’s a rapier and jabs at the air in true musketeer fashion. Picture a skinny two year old lunging at you with a pacifier. It’s so hard to pretend I’m scared when all I want to do is double over with laughter! Having Alex has meant turning into a true Disney fan, since he loves Disney so much.
All of it is amusing. But nothing is more remarkable than his latest favorite thing. Alex has been spending a lot more time with our yellow Lab, Honey. I suppose it’s because he’s older and Honey is more comfortable with him; I make the guess because Alex’s being older is the only thing that has changed, and until recently, Honey was terrified of Alex, preferring to be outside instead of being inside and subject to Alex’s squeals of glee as he chased her (it was astonishing at the time, because Honey LIVES to lay around inside the house and be petted and told how wonderful she is!). So Alex still shrieks happily as he chases Honey around (we’ve even had to chat about why we shouldn’t smack Honey on the rump and yell GO!), but she doesn’t always run and hide. Eventually, Alex calms down, gets on all fours, sticks his tongue out, and starts panting. Honey eyes him as though he’s gone mad, so she gets up to move, and he follows her, still on all fours. Long after Honey has gone outside (or found a place to hang out where Alex won’t bother her), Alex still pretends he’s a little doggie. He licks George and me, nuzzling us with his head, as Honey does. He even barks!
As if this were not weird enough, he also likes to pretend he’s a frog. We don’t have a frog, and the only thing I can think of that he’s seen on TV having to do with frogs is a two-second blip in the theme song of the PBS show, Kipper. He also has a frog hooded bath towel, but it doesn’t DO anything. But anyway, he knows that frogs stick their tongues out quickly and make a “ribbet” noise, so he will often hop around, making the frog noise and sticking his tongue out. I wonder if he’ll ever think he’s a sloth. I doubt it, because they tend to sit still and do nothing, and that seems to be out of Alex’s range.
It’s fun times around the Davis household these days. Alex’s vocabulary expands exponentially each day; yesterday he told me his ice cream was “elicious,” which threw me for a loop because I never expected my two year old to use the word “delicious” correctly! He might just sleep in his own bed now, since I informed him he could get prizes for sleeping like a big boy (you should’ve seen his face when I said that- you’d think I told him I was going to buy him a new car!). He may also finally let go of his beloved binky…I keep telling him that Binky runs away to visit Binky’s Mommy, and he seems to think this is reasonable.
I just hope that in all my BS about why Binky has disappeared and why we have to put the trains away (they need to go night-night too to get their restful sleep, you know), I don’t lose touch with reality. Because I read in Toddler 411 today that the more imaginative your child is, the more likely he is to be a top-notch liar through the preschool years. Between the two of us, Alex and I could build a whole world based on Thomas the Tank Engine, dogs, frogs, binkies, prizes, and Mickey Mouse.
