This weekend I took Nita out on a date at the Alamo Drafthouse. We went to go see the new Movie Ted. So I don’t ruin anything, I’ll stick to preview and trailer material, but the basic premise is a little unpopular boy makes a wish that his Teddy bear comes to life and it does. It isn’t imaginary; it actually grows up with him into adulthood. And he’s not the best influence, by the way. If you aren’t easily offended, this is a must see.
So early one morning, Josie is losing her mind because she can’t find her pink elephant. This is her lovie for sleep and comfort. Now I’m thinking what would it be like to really have a stuffed animal come to life? Would I be cool with it? Would I freak out and decapitate it? Shoot it? Have it blessed at the church? I’m not sure to be honest.
At Josie’s last wellness check our Doctor asked if Josie could speak 30 words. Nita and I laughed; Josie can rattle off 10 word sentences right now. In fact, Saturday before we left she said, “Mommy and daddy going on date night, we’re having pizza.” Okay, so it might have been two sentences and not a run on, but you get the point. At her preschool she was praised for her ability to tell the staff what’s what. For example, she doesn’t like the changing table they have. I suggested that maybe Nita do a change on it to show that it’s no big deal. They tried it and asked her if it was all better. Josie replied, “I still don’t like it.”
Earlier that afternoon I was flipping channels while the kids napped. I momentarily stopped on the X-games. What the F*$# are these kids/adults doing? Then it hit me, all the memories of building skateboard and bicycle ramps. The time we tried to jump over a small tree at our house in Manchaca (yes my mother was furious and made us take apart the ramp). The time I tried to see how fast I could take a turn on my ten-speed and nonchalantly walked passed my mom and her friends with blood coming out of my palms and knees. She jumped up and said, “What happened?” I told her I had to go pick some gravel out of my legs, but I’d be back to explain after I’d cleaned up.
I remember riding on handlebars, hitting a bump, falling off, and getting run over. I remember climbing up a tree in South Austin at around age six and proudly shouting to my mother that I could see K-mart from the tallest branch. I remember falling off a min-bike the first time I tried to ride it. I made a joke post on FB hoping that Connor would never be interested in anything x-games related, but know deep down to just expect to have minor emergency pre-programed into the navigation system. He is my boy after all, and I guess the apple…
As for Josie, you know how Connor loves bugs and spiders and anything he can touch right? Well Josie was watching a baby Einstein video and I saw her raise her leg. I walked over and she was moving out of the way as a spider headed toward her. I laughed because Connor would have been eye level to the spider trying to get it to crawl into his hands. In fact, while playing outside prior to our date Josie was swinging in the playscape. I noticed a Cicada hanging on to one of the beams. Connor had to see it and wanted to hold it. He climbed up and stared at it for a few minutes and then ever so gently tried to grab it. As it flew away he said, “Please come back cicada, I won’t hurt you, I just want to see your beautiful wings.” Then he scaled the rock wall backwards. Josie just giggled and ate her crackers.
Speaking of Josie’s development, she’s a bit ahead of schedule. You see a year ago I think I wrote about Connor taking off a poopy diaper by himself. Well, Josie did the same thing yesterday afternoon about four months ahead of schedule. Way to go sister. J Also we have discovered that she has a rather unconventional way of eating crackers. She basically eats them with what we’ll call the “oreo technique.” By that I mean she’ll take a cheese or peanut butter cracker and open it, lick the filling and then discard the cracker. It’s fine-ish outside but not so cool inside.
Finally, we got a pretty neat compliment yesterday. We are looking at adding to the family and had a trainer bring a dog over to the house to give us a little in-home interview. She was amazed that Connor didn’t come running up to the dog as most kids his age do. Instead he took very deliberate steps and offered a closed fist for her (the dog) to smell. He then started to gently pet the head. She was kind of blown away. I told her that he is pretty amazing with animals and she acknowledged that he was pretty special in his calm demeanor around the new dog. Josie feeds off of that and was also very gentle, although she does like to hug and wanted to hug (and potentially ride) this new dog. She may or may not work out (the dog I mean, we’re pretty bullish on Josie) so we’ll keep looking. We’re also re-thinking our puppy approach as opposed to a 1-2 year old rescue. We’ll see, you never know what will make you pull the trigger.
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