Bday and baby bonanza

We are in the thick of getting the house ready for Maddox’s Woodland Creature-themed 2nd birthday party… which is funny, because there are still decorations from her 1st birthday party hanging up in our hallway.

Specifically, I’m talking about the banner I created, featuring Maddox’s monthly baby picture from birth through 11 months.

This morning, Maddox came racing out of her bedroom and, upon spotting me, ran into my arms for a Good Morning Hug. Then, she saw her birthday banner.

She pointed and said, “I have a baby!”

“That’s YOU when you were a baby,” I told her.

“No….” she said, smiling. “I have a baby in my tummy.”

“You don’t have a baby in your tummy,” I chided. “MOMMY has a baby in her tummy.”

“Right here?” Maddox pointed to my chest.

I laughed, “No, right here,” and showed here my protruding tummy, which she happened to be pretty much perched on.

“No, right here,” she corrected me, and pointed to her own tummy. “My baby cute!”

Oh man. Wait until this baby comes… it’s going to be a madhouse around here.

 

Being blunt in the morning

After an early bedtime last night, I was somewhat expecting the kids to be up early this morning.

Anson rolled into our room sometime between 5 and 6 am.

I was too tired to put up much of a fight, which inevitably backfired. I informed Anson that he could stay in our room as long as he went to sleep: lie still and don’t make noise.

Which he did.

The result was that I fell back to sleep.

Briefly.

“Mom. You’re snoring.”

Get out of here, kid.

 

Anson’s super vivid dreams

Anson woke up yesterday morning and told me all about his incredibly vivid dreams.

“Mom, I was on the Polar Express!”

Huh? This kind of hit me out of nowhere, so I needed to get my bearings. “In a dream?”

“Yep! I dreamed I was on the Polar Express, and there was a baby on the Polar Express but the baby got left in the caboose. And the caboose came uncoupled and went sliding back down a long tall mountain, the other direction from where the Polar Express was heading.”

“Wow, buddy, that sounds pretty intense!”

“Yea but it was okay, because a train came and shunted the caboose back the same direction we were going and caught up to us.”

“Oh good!”

“And you know what, Mom?”

(pause for effect)

“It was our baby.”

The suspense! The intrigue! The storytelling finesse!

He jumped right into his next nighttime adventure. “I also dreamed that I was on a boat!”

“That’s cool, buddy. Was it a pontoon boat, like you went fishing on last week?”

“Nope. It was a motor boat.”

“Were you fishing on the motor boat?”

“No, we were on it just for fun. And Auntie Nikki was the boss on the boat.”

I don’t know that my sister would ever be a boat captain, but I appreciated him weaving in another character.

“I also dreamed I got my finger stuck in an elevator. But I didn’t even cry.”

This was a pretty rapid-fire recounting of several “head movies” in a very short span of time, so I quickly jotted the high points down in my phone’s notes so that I wouldn’t forget to share the wonder here. While I was still waiting for my coffee to kick in when he initially started bombarding me with the tales, I found his narrative style, the pregnant pauses, and the accompanying facial expressions (which sadly are a challenge to share in their full magnificence here) all to be very… familiar?

I wonder where he could be picking up his love for storytelling.