Happy Birthday to Elliot today. Oh, I love this kid so much. I was content to keep him age 2 forever, then I accepted age 3 but knew he just had to stay 3 years old forever. Well, once again time continues to fly and he's arrived at 4.
A couple of weeks ago I was kissing him good night and we had been talking about him staying 3 and not turning 4. He had finally agreed to because as he laid there, exhausted from the day he said, "It's just so hard to get to 4." It was like he was just going to give up and stop trying to "get to 4." This morning after we sang to him and the older boys left for school, we climbed back into bed to see if 4 year olds could snuggle better than 3 year olds (they can!) and I asked him, how did he turn 4? He said, "I don't know, I just sleeped and I turned 4."
It has been a great year for Elliot, first year of pre-school, in love with his teacher, Miss Tammy. Weirdly popular with the kids in his class, they all chant his name as he arrives on the playground each morning. He loves snakes and sharks and crocodiles the most. The most cute and cuddly animals known to man. He sleeps with a 10ft. long plush blue & black snake that he wraps all around him and there's still enough length for a pillow. He adores his brothers, I think Brooks most of all. I think he watches the older boys so much and wants with Brooks the kind of friendship Christian and Peyton share. I'm happy he has that to look forward to.
My father nicknamed him "The Buster" because he has a bit of an ornery streak in him. A perfect match for my dad. Several months back as one of the older boys was saying dinner time prayers, Kenny glanced up and saw that Elliot's eyes were open. He looked at Elliot in a "corrective look" and whispered "close your eyes" without missing a beat, Elliot looked right back at Kenny and said, "close your eyes!" To which Kenny tried to do one of those suppressed laughs and ended up spitting and snorting and ending the prayerful moment.
He's got skin like Kenny's (takes a tan instantly) more green than blue eyes, (must get that from my mom) a super skinny build and long neck (again-Kenny) He reminds the Winter family of Kenny's childhood days more than the other boys do.
He rides his little training wheel bike with reckless abandon (surely he gets that from mom?) and is so eager to play sports like the older boys do. He begged me for swimming lessons and is having lots of fun learning to swim.
One discovery he made this year I especially want to remember. We were saying prayers before bed one night and my heart was heavy with something. (I think baby Ira wasn't doing so well at the time) Elliot began to pray and mentioned "thank you for the dinosaurs....." At the end of the prayer, I said, Elliot, sometimes it's good to pray for things that are alive and really need our prayers. The dinosaurs don't really need our prayers because they aren't alive anymore. --can you see where this is going--. Thoroughly confused he sat up in bed and looking at me, asked intently, "the dinosaurs aren't alive?" Realizing, of course that I should have just smiled, kissed my sweet 3 year old and left the room, I regretted sharing the truth of the dinosaurs. But it was too late to back out now. "No", I said. "They are not alive anymore, they lived a very long time ago and now they are all dead." Yep, the 'D' word. Dead. Elliot sat up even straighter, 'they're all DEAD?" Ugh. It wasn't getting better. Eventually the conversation ended and I don't recall any nightmares that night or the next. But for the next few weeks our prayers included, "please help the dinosaurs to be alive and to not be dead." In other words, please help my mommy to be totally out of the loop on this one, dear God. But of course logical mommy noted about a month after hearing this repetitive prayer that if the dinosaurs were alive they would walk around smashing cars and houses because they were so huge. It's really a good thing that they lived a long time ago and not today. Now the current prayer is, "thank you that the dinosaurs are all dead so they can't walk around and smash my house down, please help the dinosaurs to stay dead, God so they don't hurt people and smash their cars....."
Some days I cringe and wonder how I ever got into this whole parenting gig.....
One thing is for certain about Elliot. Ask him any day of the week, "whose boy are you?" And without a second thought he'll reply, "I'm mommy's boy." I'll hang onto that years longer than it will last. Happy Birthday my sugar.
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