Lion and Magic Boy

Eric turns four on Saturday, a fact that completely astounds me. I had an email this week from a friend who lives far away and who I haven’t seen in a couple of years as a result, and she told me that she, too, thought it wasn’t possible that Eric is four. Two, maybe, but not four. Not in terms of what he does or anything, but in recollection of his time here so far.

But he is doing some cool stuff these days.

Parents with typical kids don’t think about what a huge thing it is, each developmental step. I know I didn’t with the first three. Once you get past the fact that yes, the kid IS developing, one stage, one accomplishment, flows into another and time surges forward and pretty soon you forget where they came from.

With Eric, though, time is slowed somewhat. I like to think that perhaps he enjoys each stage so much, really examines it thoroughly, as an explanation why he spends so much time in each one. Except in the case of language, though: there is a definite discrepancy between what he knows and what he can successfully express.

He’s begun to imitate much more lately, though, naming things, asking for names of things. Eric has been in his own space for so long that it’s very different now, him seeing finally that he’s part of the rest of us and not this separate small being off to one side, observing. So I have asked Nathaniel to name more things for Eric, and showed him examples:

“Chili is a monkey, Eric, a monkey, and he’s furry, and brown. A monkey!”

So you can imagine how it felt to hear Nathaniel saying this:

“This is a light saber, Eric, a light saber. And this is Yoda, Eric, he’s a Jedi,” with Eric dutifully repeating his versions of the words.

Today Eric picked up the small flashlight that Nathaniel pretends is the handle of a light saber, practicing his swordplay with it at odd moments throughout the house while making appropriate light saberish sounds. Eric hefted it in his grip for a moment, looked around the room to see who was watching, then began swinging it around, grinning broadly.

Jedi, check.

And he loves turning lamps on and off. Click-click. Click-click.

And he reads now. Well, “reads”. But that’s huge! Earlier today I enticed him upstairs for a nap by telling him he could take one of the 60,000 catalogs we’ve received so far this season up and look at it on my bed. I had saved him one full of toys so we could name stuff together: truck, horse, blocks. I left him on my bed happily turning pages while I threw stuff into the dryer and came back to find him all excited.

“What did you find? Did you find something you like?”

[he nods]

“Is it a truck?” Trucks are good. We can count on trucks. He nods again.

“Tuh.”

“Really? A truck?” I scan the page he’s looking at. No trucks. He holds his arms up and slightly away from him, the top half of tree pose. I looked again at the page and found the thing he is coveting so excitedly:

It’s pink. It’s a life-size (almost) ballerina doll that a child could dance with, holding her arms up in the position he modeled for me and attaching her little shoes to their feet. Eric wants a dancing doll. This is the first thing he’s seen in a catalog that he wants. Ever.

I’m really tempted to get it for him. Eric could use a friend all his own. And he really likes dancing.