Growing a Pumpkin Patch is Hard Work.

Is this thing on?

This is a photo of Syl kissing the baby she always sees in the backdoor, from the other baby's perspective.

Really, I'm just testing mobile blogging.

Subsurface

Adam has been interested in volcanos lately, and props to the Discovery Kids online volcano game - it does a great job of illustrating how the different types of volcanos are formed and how they erupt.  Still, at 4 years old, Adam is pretty literal, and while he understands that lava and magma are underground, "underground" for him is a pretty catch-all term that includes dirt, worms, rocks, slugs, and lava.

The other day, Adam was asking Chris about skunks - he's also into pretending he's a skunk - and he asked where skunks sleep.  Chris replied that sometimes skunks burrow underground in the winter for a nice warm place to sleep.  Adam thought about this for a minute and then asked, "Wow.  How do the skunks tolerate the lava?"

Four Years!

Adam is four years old today!  He is an amazing boy, and three was a fantastic, fun year.  He truly is a little boy now - his proportions, his actions, and his attitude are all those of a little kid, and not a toddler.  I'll pull him into my lap and tell him that he is my sweet baby boy and he always says, "Moooooom, why do you always call me a baby?  I'm NOT a baby - I'm a big boy!"

Yes, you are, sweet boy.  Happy birthday to my first baby.

Better than the Lizard King, I guess

"Mama! I am King of the Snails!"

"Of the snails?"

"I am King of the Snails!"

"What do you do as King of the Snails?"

"I say, 'You'd better listen to me, snails!'"

"Ah."

--------------------

"Mama! At school, me and Ro play pirates!"

"How do you play pirates?"

"We run around fall down and say, 'AAARRRRRRR!"

"Of course."

Santa was otherwise preoccupied.

Adam did not want to go to bed on Christmas Eve. By 9:30 PM, Chris was ready to pull out the big guns, so he told Adam that he was going to call Santa to reassure him that Adam was going to go to bed, so to please be sure to come by to deliver his gifts as soon as he fell asleep.

Chris picked up the phone, dialed some numbers, and talked to Santa.

"Yes, yes, Santa, Adam told me that he is going to go to sleep right now. You want to know what he wants for Christmas? Okay, I'll ask him. Adam, what do you want from Santa? A big rig? Okay, Santa, Adam wants you to bring him a big rig and he's going to go to sleep right now, so don't forget to stop by here tonight!"

Chris said goodbye to Santa and hung up the phone. At which point, Adam looked pointedly at Chris and declared, "Daddy, Santa was not on the phone."

"He wasn't? But I just talked to him!"

"No, that was not Santa. Santa is at the North Pole. Using the potty."

Worst Nightmare

When Adam turned two and a half, he started having nightmares. Developmentally, that's about the age when nightmares begin, so we weren't surprised when he started to wake up screaming. It's the content of the nightmares that's been interesting.

Initially, he had a series of nightmares in which animals (cows, goats at the petting zoo, ducks at the duck pond) would try to eat his fingers. I can see how having a farm animal eat your fingers would, indeed, be terrifying.

Last night, though, he woke up screaming and when we went to his room he was inconsolable.

"My supper! My supper! Don't take my supper! I want one more bite of macaroni! Mommy! Daddy! Don't take my supper! No!"

My son's worst nightmare? That we'll clear his plate before he's finished eating his supper. At least his priorities are in order.

Mr. Breakfast

Sunday night, Chris and I had French bread with our dinner. So on Monday morning, I used the leftover bread to make lost bread for breakfast.

After Adam plowed through three slices of lost bread, he started running the circuit between the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and back into the kitchen, shouting, "I'm Mr. Lost Bread! I'm Mr. Lost Bread! You can't catch me!" (Maybe I put too much powdered sugar on the lost bread.)

So, Chris told Adam that he was Mr. Pancake, and they chased each other through the house with Adam shouting, "I'm Mr. Lost Bread! You can't get me, Mr. Pancake!"

For the next couple of days, Adam went around calling himself Mr. Lost Bread. He'd dump out a basket of toys, put the basket on his head, and say, "Hey! What's Mr. Lost Bread got on his head?" Or, he'd play in his room after I'd put him down for a nap, saying, "Mr. Lost Bread doesn't want to take a nap!"

Finally, on Wednesday, Adam decided that I was worthy of a nickname, too, so I'm Mr. Toast. So now, we're kind of like the cast of Reservoir Dogs, except more IHOP than Crayola. Except for Dutch. He's Mr. Carrot.

For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

Adam was a little high-maintenance this week. High-maintenance, as in, waking up at 4:25 every morning and moaning, "Mommy, do you want to rock? Mommy, do you want to rock? Mommy, do you want to rock?" over and over and over again until finally, and despite the fact that I haven't wanted to rock - or do anything other than sleep - at 4:25 AM since 1996, one of us would go into his room and rock him in the glider and doze until about 6:00 AM, when Adam would exclaim, "Wake up! It's early time! I am ready for a waffle!"

When he didn't want to rock, he was kind of bossy, demanding, and whiny. It reminded me of when he was a few months old and an occasional bout of extreme fussiness and poor sleep usually meant that he was about to hit some big developmental milestone, like rolling over or dropping a feeding, and I figured that his behavior this week could only mean that he was about to do something huge, like tackle quantum physics.

Things came to a head a few days ago when I presented him with his dinner: potatoes mashed with collards, a slice of pizza (I try always give him something that I know he'll eat, and the collards seemed risky), and these really delicious black-eyed pea fritters. Those fritters were outrageously good - so tasty, in fact, that when Chris and I had some with our dinner the night before, we said to each other that if Adam (who has been a little picky about his food lately) didn't go for these, we would start to worry about his taste buds. Adam ate his pizza, poked at the potatoes ("They have green in them! I don't like green."), and when he got to the fritters, asked, "Mommy, what are those? Are those minis?" (Adam calls Chick-fil-A nuggets "minis," as in the restaurant's blessedly good wee little chicken biscuits.)

"They're kind of like minis, except they have black-eyed peas in them. They're very good - I think you'll like them."

Adam sneered and, sounding a lot like the Queen of Hearts, said, "Those look like dirty minis. Put them in the trash!"

He picked the fritters up off his plate and thrust them towards me. I ate them. They were delicious.

Things got better as the week progressed, and by this morning, he was back to his normal, funny, adorable self. We've been going swimming at the city pool every morning, and today he started a new Parent's Morning Out near our house, and he loved it:

"They have trucks there! I played with the trucks! They have two diggers, too, but one digger broke, but that was okay. When I need to go pee pee, I say, 'Teacher! I need to go pee pee!' and then we go to the little potty. And then I ate lunch. I ate PBJ and fruit leather. I like it!"

Ambition

Adam has been fighting a virus for the past several days, and after a fever spike yesterday morning, we visited the pediatrican. Later yesterday afternoon when we were snuggling on the sofa reading a Thomas story for the thousandth time, Adam asked, "Are we going to go anywhere today?"

"No, sweetie," I answered, "we're going to hang out at home today since you're not feeling very well."

"Oh. Can we go back to the doctor's office? They have fishies there. And lollipops." Good point, son.

"No, baby, we're going to stay here. Do you like your doctor? Do you want to be a doctor when you grow up?"

"Yes! I want to be a doctor!"

One minute later...

"Actually, mommy, I want to be a dog."

Story

"Mommy! I have a story! Once upon a time, there were two kisses! And once upon a time, there were two hugs! Oh! What a wonderful story! The end!"