Monday, September 8, 2008

I think I am Going to Be Singing That Song for the Next Week

The Little Man seems to have been neglected. I have been blogging a lot about The Girl, with a slight sprinkling of The Little Man here and there. It hasn't been on purpose, but more because The Girl has really been coming into her own, what with school and all. The poor Little Man, he's just been hanging out in the background, waiting for her to come home, and then sits quietly while she goes on and on about her day.

Before I make this a post about her, I digress. This will be about a couple of the fun things The Little Man has been up to. He's gotten interesting lately, or I've been able to pay closer attention to him more lately because we have many more hours in the week we are alone together now. Here we go:

1) The Little Man still loves Cars the movie. Even though he hasn't watched it in quite some time, he loves to play cars, talk about Lightening McQueen, and wear Cars clothing. His favs are his Lightening McQueen shoes. He thinks he can run so fast in those. He even told me today that he would prefer to run to The Girl's school today instead of drive. He thought we would get there faster.

He also has his favorite Mac truck (still from the Cars movie, for those who are unfamiliar) toy. He got the toy for his birthday, and rarely a day goes by without it getting played with. I particularly love to watch him play when he thinks that no one is looking. That's when you'll see a very serious face (complete with a furrowed brow), and then you get an unexpected song as he drives his truck through the kitchen.

For a while I couldn't figure out what he was doing. I mean I knew he was singing, but why then? And what was he singing? Finally, today I figured out the tune. He has been driving all those miles in the kitchen singing "Life is a Highway" by Rascal Flats. It's kind of the theme song for the movie. I guess that's his favorite part, when Mac is driving all those miles to get to the final race for the Piston cup, and "Life is a Highway" is playing as the background music. As I watched today, the whole sequence started making much more sense once I figured out the whole singing thing. Shortly after The Little Man takes a song break, McQueen falls out of the back of the truck and screams for Mac to "Stop!" and "Wait up Mac!" and "Don't leave me!"

This whole time I thought he was just playing trucks. Meanwhile, he has been reenacting the entire movie complete with music. Once I figured this out, I sang the "Life is a Highway" song for him. You should have seen the way his face lit up. I ended up singing that song from about 9:30 am until just shortly after dinner, when I had to let him down and tell him he is going to need to sing his own theme music.

2) The Little Man recently came into ownership of some Spider Man jammies. LOVES THEM. They even have the netted fabric that connects from the wrist of the sleeve to the bottom of the bodice part of the shirt. Wouldn't you know, the very first thing he did when I put those things on him (at 12:30 in the afternoon thankyouverymuch), was jumped off his bed with his arms spread wide. He has never jumped off of something that high before (not that I have seen at least, and from the expression on his face afterwards, I think I am right). After the initial shock (from both of us), I asked him what he was doing. He just said he was Spider Man now and he needed to learn how to jump around.

Also, when he wears the jammies, which is A LOT, he would prefer to be called Spider Man instead of his name, and will correct you if you forget.

Considering he has never seen a Spider Man comic, movie, or cartoon, I think his passion for the Webbed One is kind of cute in a I'm-a-Super-Hero-who-will-save-you-and-the-day sort of way.

Plus, it has given us a small break from the "Lipe Sabers".

In which there is still a fierce passion.

3) Lastly, and not nearly as fun, we have been working on a slight regression in the potty training department. After months of no accidents, we have been experiencing a few mishaps here and there. I'm not sure what is going on, but we have decided to put up a potty chart. For 7 beautifully, fun-filled, accident free days, he will receive one jumbo poster sized color book. Complete with pictures of Buzz, Woody, the Monsters Inc. crew, and the cast of The Incredibles. The deal is, I leave the color book out so he gets to look at it, touch it, smell it (if he wants to), but doesn't get to use it. Yes, I get some fits, but in the end it's supposed to motivate when you can see that it's already here, you just have to earn it.

This technique worked really well on The Girl when she experienced the same type of lapse back in the day. So I thought I would pull it out again. He's not so much getting it, but we'll get there. He thinks that by earning a sticker for the day he should be able to have his book. He 's not quite getting the whole it's-a-collection-of-several-days idea here. When it's all said and done, he'll get it. Then I am going to pull out the chart action on some other annoying habits that we are trying to break.

I'm sure he can hardly wait.

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