month 54

Every month I have to whip out the old calculator to figure out how many months you are. You're just getting that old.

Old enough to climb up to the sink and use the soft water-faucet as your own personal drinking fountain.

Old enough to be already eating cereal when Dad gets out of bed to get Lily up.

Old enough to sit through, and fall in love with, 3 Magic Tree house books inside of a week. (Thanks for the tip, April.)

But NOT, under any circumstances, old enough to have an imagination.

It's true. Sad but true. I have a 4 1/2 year old son with no imagination to speak of. How do I know this?

Because when, after forcing your father and I to pretend we were your food and scream about how badly we were being tortured, and how you were leaving some poor, sad cheerios child fatherless, I made the mistake of saying you had a good imagination, you loudly, yet clearly stated that you had no imagination. You had a real. And make no mistake about it.

I won't go into the long term implications of that scenario being actually real to you, let's just say we have our differences of opinion and leave it at that.

But the truth is I'm not too worried. You may not know it, but you are making up your own little version of the world that no one else sees. I guess we all do to some extent. And it's healthy--especially when were young. We allow ourselves only the tiny bits of truth we can digest, and then we make up the rest. You'll keep getting little bits as time goes on, and in no time at all you'll be a contributing member of society.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Last weekend you went to a birthday party and came home with a substantial "loot" of candy. When I was sifting through the bag; you know, for the purposes of border control, I found an Air Heads candy.

I love Air Heads.

And so I asked you if you would be eating the Air Head. (Aren't I a nice mom?) You freaked out and said you hated Air Heads because "They are bad for you!" I took that as a no, and proceeded to open the candy.

OK. I have to stop here to place special emphasis on my next statement. Ready?

I have never seen you freak out so badly in your whole life.I'm talking PANIC. You clawed at my mouth and screamed at me to SPIT IT OUT! THROW IT IN THE GARBAGE! You were crying and shrieking and, well, basically having a cow. I asked why, and you just kept screaming, "IT'S NOT GOOD FOR YOU!" and you wouldn't stop until I had spit it out.

The next day at Daddy's office Aunt Sarah tried to give Lily an Air Head sucker, and you flipped out again.

"DOES IT HAVE A BALLOON ON IT? YOU CAN'T EAT IT! DON'T GIVE IT TO LILY!"

Holy cow. I did not know a child could have such contempt for candy. So Sarah finally got you to tell us the problem. You had seen an especially disturbing commercial for Air Heads candy where the head of the person eating the candy turned into a balloon and floated away.

Not good for you. Naturally.

But see, you're picking up on these little bits of the world little by little. I am truly sorry for the undue fear for my life, and I hate to tell you this, but sometimes learning hurts.

And sometimes it's just funny.

The other day we were reading your story about the Power Wheels cars racing to the car show, and in my best monster truck voice I read, "The drivers know all the shortcuts to the show...just don't break the law!"

And you said, "YA! The LAW!...Mom, what's the law?"

And as I was walking into the other room last week I heard one of your friends say,

"Hey, my mom has one of these!"

and you said, "Mom, what's this?"

And I looked around and you were holding up a tampon.

That was a bit of the world I was glad I didn't have to explain because of the abrupt change in subject when you thought your toy gun made a farting noise.

But I hope that Daddy and I are giving you as true a representation of the world as we can, in the most gentle way we possibly can. I know now more than ever that the things we say and do affect not only your view of the world, but the way you react to it. You have caused me to change a lot of things about myself that could be the cause of skewing your perception of the world, and I constantly pray that I've done enough and that I will keep doing enough. You have changed my view of the world. In all the years before we had you and Lily, I never knew it could be such a beautiful place.

The other night we were driving home and I had to pull over and take a picture of something I saw that was lovely to me. And from the back seat I heard,

"The world is really beautiful."

And it is, Alex. Because you're in it.