My son has stopped playing with cars.
OH MY GOD HE HAS STOPPED PLAYING WITH CARS!
I am so not ready for this. I mean, look at my banner. Cars are my constant companions, my never-fail distractors in times in trouble, my streaming topics of conversation. My son and cars go together like peanut butter and ... well, hold on, because he doesn't actually eat jelly. Or much of anything, for that matter, but anyway, if he did like jelly, they would be squished together between two pieces of (non-grain-having) bread (with the crust ripped off) (Of course).
In June my big little man moved into the K-4 classroom at his daycare. Yes. It's a real K-4. It's awesome. It costs more than an auto bailout, but I am grateful to be there and I give props (and all my money) to really great day care centers. Spending time with five and almost six year olds has been a mind-blowing experience for him. He's drawing pictures. Not just any old pictures, pictures that look like what they are supposed to be. We're playing Bingo nightly. He can operate my iPhone faster and more easily than I can. The other night while reminding me that I hadn't yet put his milk back in the refrigerator he pointed out that "it won't possibly get cold if you leave it sitting out." He asks for more syrup, please, and has stopped demanding I do things immediately. Rather he will say, "when you are done feeding Ro can I have another yogurt?" acknowledging that he is not the only person in the room.
(Shhh. This is top secret and it can't get out that I mentioned it, lest I get struck down by the sleeping gods but he's SLEEPING. A good 10-11 hours. IN.A.ROW. The past four weeks have been the best stretch of sleep he's ever had in his entire life and that is not hyperbole. That's a straight up fact.)
The cars have been replaced by Transformers. Transformers. Robots in disguise. Autobots and Decepticons. We have Transformer undies, tees, flip flops, books, toys and two discs of the old school cartoon on heavy rotation. One night before bedtime he sat with his dad in bed and talked for almost one and a half hours straight about the Transformers. What they did, where they came from, what kind of tools they had, what they did with the energy. It was amazing. It was like a switch had been flipped. Seemingly new pathways of his mind opened up and it was happening right before our eyes.
I suppose one could argue Transformers are sort of like cars. I mean, Ratchet is an ambulance and Optimus Prime is a Semi-Truck. So I guess we're not completely done with them, but when I see his train table littered with cars that have been untouched for days, weeks even, I can't help but want to slam on the brakes.
I've always planned on taking all my photos of his car creations/patterns and making them into a photo-book for him one day. He can't really be over this, can he?
