Pretending

Mason is fully in the pretending stage now.  He is always "getting things packed up" to go on trips.  When I ask him where he is going, it is usually "breakfast" or "lunch" instead of an actual place.  We go out to eat very rarely and when we do it is a big deal.  I think he remembers every single restaurant we have ever been in (but again, that is not very many).

Right now he is playing airplane/boat/car.  He is sitting on a towel which is the airplane, but everything is "packed up" in the boat (Alex's rubber ducky bathtub) and he is driving the car.  When I walked by he screamed for me to get out of the street, and then when I tried to talk to him, he said he couldn't hear me because he was in the car.

With the cousins last night they mostly played zombies.  There was lots of bombs going off and shooting bad guys.  I guess this is pretty common for boys.  At least boys that are Steve's off-spring.  I think I need to invest in some noise-canceling head phones, because this kind of play really annoys me.  I am going to need them by the time Alex joins in the chaos.

He often acts out the Thomas the Train episodes with his trains.  I don't know if that is pretending, but it gets pretty elaborate.  By the way, I checked on the number of Thomas engines there were, and there are officially 84 engines!  EIGHTY-FOUR!!!  That is ridiculous.  That doesn't count all the extra trucks and stuff that goes with the engines.  He probably has about twenty, I should count those next.

Another of Mason's constant expressions is always needing to know where he is going when he wakes up. He asks, "Where am I going when I wake up?" I answer with whatever it is, and then he points up in the air with one finger and asks, "this morning?" (checking to make sure that we are indeed going to that place tomorrow).  I say yes, and he gets happy.  Always the same.  And always happy even if the answer is nothing except to clean the house.

He also asks about "when you were this big" all the time.  Whatever he is doing anything, he asks if I did that "when I was this big" or "when I was a little girl." I don't really know why he does this, maybe it makes him feel normal if it was something that I did too.  It is just simple stuff, like coloring: "Momma, you like to color when you was this big?"  I say yes, and he just goes on with coloring with no response.  It is almost like his validation that he can continue doing whatever it is he was doing.  

He is also very aware of the things that he has, when he got them, and who gave it to him.  Absolutely everything he owns goes this way: [Thomas book] "Sherry got me this book for me for Christmas from the store." (lots of things are just from "the store") Or it is in question form: Mason: "Who got me this book?" Me: "Abby and Owen" Mason: "Why did they get it for me?" Me: "Because it was your birthday." Mason: "Where did they get it?" Me: "the store." Mason: "Why?" Me: "Because they thought you would like it." Mason: (smiling, because I played along again...) "Oh."  Always the same.  And he already knows all the answers, he just wants to hear them again.  I don't know if other kids are like that, but he sure is.

On the Alex front, he is still not completely cleared up from his chest congestion.  I don't really know what else to do, but I will probably take him back to the doctor soon.  He is still acting perfectly fine and happy.  He is starting to get up on his knees for crawling and just rocking back and forth.  If I remember correctly, that means crawling is a couple of weeks away.