Days of Wonder and Magic

This is such a fun time to be a parent, I think. Almost every day, we get to see Mal putting something new together. His way of processing it is so sweet and funny; we laugh a lot, and James and I have a lot to share as we experience him so differently on our own.

For instance, the other day, Mal was playing with this cash register he's had forever. It has a little calculator display screen, and he was putting in a number, then he'd open the register, and take money out. It took a couple of times for me to realize what he was doing, including my just typing in a 7 and his telling me that wasn't how to do it.

That was when I put it together: He'd press the "1," which would show up on the screen, then he'd clear it out, open the till, and pull out a one dollar bill. Next, he typed in "5," saw it on the screen, cleared it out, opened the till, and pulled out a five dollar bill. That was when I tried the 7, but he wasn't having it.

He cleared that out, looked at the pad, and asked me, "How do you do ten?" I said, "Press the 1." He did. "Now press the zero." He did, and looked at the result, then beamed that it had worked! Then he opened the drawer and took out a ten dollar bill.

After that, he'd type in numbers to see if I could do what he was putting in. Nothing crazy, just $90 or $40. At one point, he put in 0.0, so I told him to add a 1, and I pulled out a penny, explaining that's how you write it.

He stayed interested for a long time. Finally, after James got home and we were chatting, Mal played with it by himself long enough to bring up the "E" (for error), and asked how to make it do an "a." We had to explain that "e" is the only letter it has, and he worked for a while to try to get it to come back up.

That's Flo. We got her last weekend, after James had finished a couple of weeks of his new job. Mal asked for so many things when James was unemployed, and we said no so much more often than usual. Mal is thrilled to have a few more Cars cars. He plays with them every day.

In fact, he has a whole laundry list of toys he trots out every day, some times a couple of times a day: The Cars 2 set, plus any extras he's acquired (but we've lost Carla Veloso and Holly Shiftwell, sadly); his Star Wars Micro Machines sets; PJ Masks; the Star Wars Hot Wheels Death Star set; and some type of "egg challenge." Mal watches those toy videos on YouTube, so he likes for us to hide the toys he already has either in plastic eggs, or in play dough.

He's still pretty bossy about the scripting of the scenes, but is getting better at improvising, too. His imagination is incredible, and as a result, he's starting to have vivid "stories," or dreams.

The other night, he woke up terrified, saying, "I don't like the jungle! I don't want to go there!" I told him we wouldn't. He said, "The koala was trying to eat my foot!" I assured him a koala wouldn't try to eat his foot. He said, "And an alligator." Me: ...

We had a long, busy day today, as we ran a bunch of places and then James took part in a 2-hour focus group after work. We were in Mal's room playing this evening when he had all of his PJ Masks out on his table, along with his sack of Hot Wheels cars. He asked me to pull out several specific cars he likes to use with his characters, and I told him he could do it himself.

Mal said, "I can't! I have to finish some work first!"

Then he put his hands up on the table and mimed typing, vocalizing, "Beep, beep, blooop, beep, blorp..." for a few moments, before announcing, "I'm finished! Now I can play!"

I got the cars out for him.

On a likely-related note, yesterday at different times, I was trying to finish and file our taxes, and fill out paperwork to transfer the title to our new car, and a couple of other administrative things. Mal was still wanting to talk to me (I incorrectly wrote a number I know by heart) and bounce around on the chair I was sitting in. I kept asking him to PLEASE step away and that I'd play with him as soon as I was finished with what I was doing.

There's so much more, but I promised I wouldn't stay up until 1 AM again tonight. Looks like I'm a liar.

That's another thing: Mal has taken to going to bed around 11 PM and waking up at 9:30ish (with the normal nighttime rousings). Today I got my chores done before he was out of bed, and the other day I showered, which is nice. But I'm more of an early-to-bed/early-to-rise kind of gal, and it seems like a lot of things we want to do are earlier. Like a free breakfast from Chick-fil-A.

Maybe it's a season. He used to go by daylight, so at the beginning of winter, he was going to bed super early. Now that he's used to staying awake 4-5 hours after the sun goes down, I'm a bit concerned about this summer!