Ben has decided that we are all “sauruses”, or dinosaurs. I am the mama-saurus, daddy is the daddy-saurus, Maya is the baby-maya-saurus, Ben is the son-saurus, and a little neon-colored t-rex he got from somewhere is the baby-saurus.
This is serious stuff. The baby-saurus was crying a few nights ago and we all had to sing “rock-a-bye baby” three times, which still didn’t help, so Ben had to sing the baby-saurus his ABC song. It finally worked and the baby-saurus went to sleep (in Ben’s bed).
Later that night we went out to get some dinner, and we were in the restaurant waiting for take-out when Ben realized the baby-saurus was in the car. Full bore panic. What if he was crying? What if he was hungry? What if he was lonely? Clearly Ben is a very attentive parent. Soon he will give parenting classes while humming the ABCs and rocking his neon green and blue baby-saurus to sleep.
We enjoyed the game until Ben refused to answer to anything except son-saurus, and of course we kept forgetting and trying to get his attention using the far inferior name of “Ben,” or even, “Benjamin,” which would send him into a frenzy, shouting, “I’m a son-saurus mama! A SON-SAURUS!” like I was elderly and clearly deaf. He’s not even a teenager yet. Anyway, this quickly ruined the “cute” for us, because after so many minutes cute diminishes into annoying which diminishes into “you need to go to bed now and take the d@!# ’saurus’ with you.”
Nevertheless I hope against hope that this sort of action will help him to adjust when Maya comes (May 15th, by the way — scheduled c-section) and he’ll do some of these cute things like rock her to sleep, rather than try to stash her in the dryer when I’m not looking. It all seems very positive right now — he even asks if the baby (his baby) will like his toys.
Oh, if you only knew, son-saurus. If you only knew.
April 14th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Ha ha! I kinda skimmed through the first paragraph and didn’t notice that baby-saurus was a stuffed animal. I was very shocked when I read that baby-saurus was in the car while you guys were inside getting food! I figured even if the baby couldn’t eat it, it still didn’t seem right to make it wait out in the car! Ahhhh, so much for my speed reading skills, eh?
Misheru: We generally try not to leave actual flesh and blood children in the car when we are not there, particularly in Arizona because it will get you arrested quicker than you can say “heat stroke.” But yes, baby-saurus was and is a neon dinosaur toy.