Mine mine mine, all mine

imagine this

We are coming to the realization that our child has a pretty decent imagination - which can be both a good and a bad thing. Good, obviously, because it promotes creativity and enables him to entertain himself easily. Bad, because sometimes the imagination seeps out around the edges in his sleep, resulting in nightmares.

A couple of nights ago, Charles and I entertained Drew by making up stories for him, featuring him as a valiant hero coming to the rescue of a town beset by a big bully dragon, who kept stealing everyone's blocks.

Drew was thrilled to be the starring player in this drama - and later that evening we caught him building a "castle" with his Legos, and muttering about "dragons" and "superheroes" and the like, obviously adding to the story that we'd begun.

About two hours after he went to bed that night, he woke up crying. I went into his room and asked him what was wrong.

"Mama!" he sobbed. "There's a dragon in here! It's gonna get me!"

"Drew, there's no dragon in here. You told the dragon to go away, remember? In the story?"

Drew considered that for a moment, and then, in same tone of horror he used to tell us about the dragon, exclaimed, "Mama! There's a booger in my nose!"

"I don't know which he found more frightening..." Charles said later, "the dragon or the booger."

And, in the spirit of reporting cute things Drew says: this morning, on the way to work, Drew started fussing and rubbing at his eyes. When Charles asked him what was wrong, he responded frantically, "Dada - the sun's poking me in the eye!"

Trucks, and the many faces of Drew

Charles bought himself a truck last week. As homeowners, he explained to me, we were remiss in not owning a pickup truck.  A pickup truck can be used for many things, such as picking up mulch for the flowerbeds, hauling trash to the dump and buying ladders long enough to reach the roof of our two-story house.

And if it should happen to just look really cool and manly, well, that's just a bonus, right?

I'm really thinking that Charles might actually divorce me and marry this truck. And the sad thing is, I think Drew would choose to live with the truck.

I put him in my car - my boring, sedate, sedanly Mercury - yesterday to take him to school, and he immediately burst out with, "No! I wanna ride in Dada truck! Dada TRUCK!"

Earlier this week, while riding in the truck, I asked Drew to demonstrate his grasp of different emotions.

We started out with basic ones, like mad...

And then we moved on to happy...

I'm not sure what the balled-up fist is all about - maybe he's thinking, "I'm so happy I could punch someone in the face!" I've been that happy before, yes I have. I'm that happy right now, as a matter of fact.

Then I challenged him, and asked him to show me 'surprised'. This is what he came up with...

Not bad, huh? Then I asked him to show me "bored face."

Bored face looks more like what I would consider mad face, but then again, I'm usually mad when I'm bored too, as in, I'm so pissed that I have to fold laundry right now, this is so boring, why can't these clothes just fold themselves?

And finally, apropos of nothing much, allow me to demonstrate how well we've taught Drew table manners...

Notice, if you will, the delicate and manageable bites that he takes, and the way he chews with his mouth closed. And how he enjoys a little bit of popcorn shrimp with his ketchup.

just a few quick notes

I found this really neat blog today - it's called Greenville Daily Photo and, as the name implies, it features photos taken daily in and around downtown Greenville.  Some very cool shots, and I really like the way the photos are broken down into categories on the side, including by time-of-day.

I especially loved the section on fountains. I can't figure out if that's just because Greenville has such beautiful and interesting fountains or because it's topping 100 degrees today and looking at fountains makes me feel cooler. Probably a combination of the two.

Last night in the car on the way home from work, Charles and I had a little squabble about the temperature in the vehicle. See, my office is always way too hot, whereas his office is frigid enough to store meat. So, naturally, when I get into the car to go home, I want to crank up the air conditioning, while he wants to bake in the heat.

We don't own one of those cars with the his-and-hers temperature systems; it's one-temp-fits-all. So we're bickering good-naturedly about the direction of the vents and the level of the fan and so forth, when Drew pipes up from the backseat, in a commanding tone,  "Mama! Make Dada happy."

"Yeeesss!" cries Charles,  pumping a fist in the air. "That's my boy! Make Dada happy!"

OK, I know Charles was gone for six weeks, and Drew really missed him and all, but really...that's going a little overboard, don't you think?

apples and berries

So, we're sitting at the dinner table last night, Drew and I. I have served Drew a gourmet, carefully hand-crafted meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and applesauce.

Drew is munching away when he turns to me and says, contemplatively, "Applesauce. That's a funny word."

"Um, yes, it is sort of funny," I say, trying not to laugh.

"Yes, Mama," he responds seriously. Then he tells me that his applesauce has "turned yucky." Completely out of the blue! One second it's perfectly delicious, albeit amusingly labeled, and then, suddenly, it's inedible.

I add a sprinkle of cinnamon to the top of it, which apparently makes it palatable again.

"It not yucky now!" Drew says, excitedly.

Saturday morning, we drove a few miles down the road to The Happy Berry farm, where we picked blueberries.

Charles, who grew up in this area, said actually paying for the berries we picked was a new experience for him, since, as a child, he and his friends simply snuck through the woods and stuffed their faces for free.

"I'll thank you not to expose our innocent young son to your outlaw past," said I.

Drew took his berry picking very seriously. The farm owners will tell you that a certain amount of "grazing" from the bushes is expected, even encouraged, during picking. But Drew was having none of it.

"Berries go in the basket. IN THE BASKET!" he would say when we tried to entice him to try one. Obviously, he will not be following in the thieving steps of his father.

 

Also, despite the almost-100-degree weather, Drew declined to be picked up and carried, nor would he allow us to carry the basket for him for longer than a minute or two.

"I walk by MYSELF. I carry basket MYSELF."

We finally convinced him to sit in the shade and rest, although he continued to pick berries even while sitting.

 

When we returned to the farmhouse to weigh in our berries, it was a struggle to get him to sit down and drink some water.

After his nap, we let him help us make blueberry muffins and blueberry-lemon bread. The bread turned out quite yummy. The muffins, however, did not, although our greyhound Simon quite enjoyed them. Who knew that white corn meal would taste so different from yellow corn meal? The recipe called for yellow, but I didn't have yellow. I had white. It's only a minor color difference, right?

Basically I ended up with blueberry cornbread, shaped like muffins. They look great. I mean, seriously great. Fluffy, oozing with plump blue fruit, lightly browned on top...they should have tasted divine.  But they tasted like cornbread, which, while not a bad taste, is not a sweet, soft, delicate, melt-in-your-mouth taste. Cornbread tastes like roughage - like practical, stick-to-your-ribs breakfast food. Muffins taste like buttery sin on a plate.

But did I mention the bread was good?

my very own drill sergeant

For those of you who don't know, I've been playing single mom for six weeks. I didn't post too much about it, because I thought it unwise to tell the whole Internet that my husband was out of town, but now that he's back, I can whine and gripe tell you all about it.

Now, don't get me wrong - he wasn't on vacation exactly. He's been having the crap kicked out of him daily at Fort Jackson's Drill Sergeant school. I, on the other hand, got to have the crap kicked out of me daily by a preschooler. I'm not sure which one is worse, actually.

See, it really takes two people to do most things with Drew, like get him to eat and get him to put his pajamas on and get him to brush his teeth. It's not that he doesn't enjoy doing these things, he would just much rather make me chase him around the room several times before giving in. It's much easier chasing a preschooler around the room when your husband can flank him and head him off at the pass.

Last night, while attempting to get Drew into his pajamas, Charles had hold of both of his arms and was gamely attempting to keep him from swinging from side to side while I grasped for his feet - and Charles said, "Man, I don't see how you did this every night."

Music to my ears.

So, onward to the pictures! Last weekend, my family journeyed with me to Fort Jackson, where we got to see Charles graduate and get his cool drill sergeant hat. Upon seeing Charles for the first time, Drew yelled, "I got my daddy back! I got my daddy back!"

Drew found daddy's new hat quite intriguing. I believe his exact words were, "Dat a big hat, daddy."

Here's Charles marching all stern-faced back to his seat after receiving his badge and hat.

Watching the ceremony. Drew almost fell asleep until they started singing cadences. He found that fascinating.

My family: mom and dad, my sister Jennifer and brother-in-law Paul and my other sister Laura and future brother-in-law Eric.

After graduation - we're so glad to have Charles back. I have a to-do list approximately four pages long, including replacing the shutters that blew off the top story windows and mowing the back yard.  Oh, and ironing all my clothes from now on, because man, I'm just not good at that. And if there's one thing a military man can do great, it's press a pair of pants.