The Little One
I’m so used to my two year old being a baby that is always surprises and amazes me to see signs of his little personality. For example, tonight I took my boys to a drive-in movie for the first time. Since 10pm is the point at which they both turn into gently snoring pumpkins, I was hoping that I might get to stay for the second movie but alas, the drive-in experience was entirely too exciting and the second movie was entirely too violent, so we cut out before the opening credits rolled.
Although my chatty five year old kept up a steady stream of conversation during the twenty minute drive home (about death of all things — when he and his brother are going to die, when I’m going to die, whether we can be buried next to each other, what it will be like to be buried, whether we will have another life, whether dead spiders have another life, why our bodies can’t live forever, whether someone can put us back together once we are buried and turn into dirt), I thought for sure that my two year old would fall asleep. He’s pretty committed to his sleep schedule and a car ride, morbid conversation filled or no, is usually just the ticket.
Sure enough, when we arrived home he was deeply asleep. I whispered to his brother to tiptoe into the house and I ran to unlock the door so that I could smoothly transition him into bed. As I walked back to the car and peered inside at his little sleeping body he suddenly let out a giggle, quickly covered his face with his arms, and then dropped his arms and made his face relax. With a shock I realized that he was tricking me! He was pretending to be asleep! He was playing a little joke on me!!
This isn’t the first time this has happened, but it’s the first time where it was so drawn out and so premeditated and so unexpected, precisely because I was really expecting him to be asleep.
I love that he was playing a little trick on me!
I remember when he was newly born and his brother was three and I was so immersed in how much easier three was than zero. I looked forward, somewhat desperately, to the days when he’d be three. It seemed an almost intolerably long wait, but here we are, a mere six months away, and already his little-boyness is shocking to me. I love the way he counts things (”One [unintelligible] seben, eight, ine, hen!”), the way he always asks when I wake up in the morning, “Mom, you wake up from nap?,” the way he calls to me from the bedroom and when I come to look for him he’s hiding and giggling under the covers.
I am so in love with this little two year old of mine.