What toddlers want
Last night while I was putting my two-year-old to bed, he asked me for his striped pants, which were in the hamper. I knew he meant the black-and-yellow striped pants, part of his bumblebee pajama set. They weren’t too smelly. I helped him put them on. Then he asked for his yellow shirt. “The bumblebee shirt?” I asked. Yes, he said. “I need to be a bumblebee.” And that, dear reader, is what he needed so he could go to sleep last night.
Tonight it was the dinosaur pajamas, which he likes because he can zip up himself. “Moses is a dinosaur,” he said when the zipping was done. We read two books and sang three songs and now the dinosaur is sleeping in his crib.
What I’m thinking about is how good it is to know exactly what you want to be, and to get to be different things when you feel like it, and to go through life like Moses does, who always seems to know exactly what he wants, usually in very specific and urgent ways. I am trying to make a decision about something, actually a couple of decisions, and the problem is I don't know which thing it is that I want. I ask other people for advice. What I'm asking is for someone to come along and tell me what to do. Uncertainty, after a certain point, gets painful. I think this was why religion was invented, because everyone wants someone who knows.
Anyway here is a picture of the thunderstorm that came over DC last night. Sarah and Moses slept right through it. I turned all the lights off so we could see it better. This morning it didn't even seem like it had rained.
Links
This week I got super sick (not COVID) and then was alone with the kids for a couple of days while Matt was out of town and so the only link I have is to an old article in the Times about scent gardens. One thing I do know is that someday I want to smell the plant that smells like ketchup.