What Can I Say - He's a Character!

The books are up! It feels much better now! And today was a "Grandma and SIE Day". He came over here for the day and brought the dogs with him so Blue could play, too. We played and played so much. I totally love watching and listening to him. I think he's one of God's finer creations!

I can't believe what an imagination he has. First we played "Talking Animals". At his house it's usually "Talking Cars" because he has a bunch of cars. But I have a bunch of animals - the hard rubber type: tigers and lions and farm animals, etc. Today he started off dumping all the animals out of the box in a heap. They were all sleeping. A couple of the children woke up and started to play tag, then decided to walk down to the river (which is where the rug hits the wood floor). The last time he was over, the baby seal taught everyone to swim and he wanted to do it again, but something happened and a baby duck got swept out to sea on a piece of wood. One of the baby tigers had to hop on a rocket (an old pair of binoculars) and lasso the duckling and pull him to shore while the other "kids" went to wake up the parents. Whew!

Next we set up the store. It's easy in my livingroom since there's lots of empty space and 7 empty milk crates! He used to have a cash register that broke several months ago. His mom got him a new one for his birthday, but put it aside and pulled it out last week when he was sick. So we had a food store, a toy store, and a pet store (with the dogs) Something prevented us from buying too much. I think it was because he decided he wanted to be my new puppy instead of the shop keeper.

So I made him a bed under my desk and scratched his ears and tried to get him to curl up and sleep in my bed, which only ended up with him crawling under the blanket to hide.

One of the shelves on my new book case has children's books. Some are ones I've kept from my own kids, and some are ones I've gotten along the way. A few are ones SIE's parents put in a box for a yard sale and I scarfed them up before they knew it. He pulled out one from the shelf that he hadn't seen since he was a baby. It's a color learning book that has a simple story and a dial you can turn to change the color of different animal's eyes. I think it's called "Purple Eyes". We read it twice; then I heard him reading it to himself a couple more times during the day.

A nice thing about SIE is that he feels comfortable opening drawers and getting things out. He was playing with Hammy (whose name has been changed to Hammer) and decided to draw a portrait of her and put it in her cage. So now Hammy has a life size drawing propped up beside her wheel.

I think he has photographic vision, because he can tell you where everything was the last time he saw it even if we didn't play with or talk about it. Last time he was at my house he saw a monkey cup on the counter by the sink. I didn't know he saw it; I was saving it for him. When he came this morning, he told his mom about it, then used it to drink melted lime popsicles and water all day long. He had 3 lime popsicles today! And lots of other food. I think he was making up for last week.

While we played indoors, the dogs ran in and out tracking in muddy footprints and wet fur. The weather is crazy - bright sun, very cold, snowing big snowflakes in the AM, and hailing briefly in the afternoon. The dogs fought over who got toweled off first whenever they'd come in and never really seemed to notice how wet and muddy they were. Izzy found an old bone under a tree and acted like it was wonderful to make the other dogs jealous. Frankie and Blue spent their time creeping up on each other - they look like two panthers crouching in the grass stealthily creeping toward a kill - or like a show down at the OK Corral. SIE got a big kick out of cleaning up their muddy prints with paper towels, then showing me how dirty the towel got. We'd both say, "Oo-oo-oo ew, Yuck!" Then he'd crack up laughing over and over again.

What can I say - he's a character!