My son told me his underpants were too small the other day. (They’re not.) We were going out to Big Lots—one of my favorite stores for random consumer fun—so I decided to look for some more underpants for him while we were there.
I didn’t see much, but I did find a set of six super hero-esque ones that were his size. There are just a lot of super heroes these days and quite frankly, I can’t keep them all straight. I figured I’d sort it out when we got home.
By the time we got back from our afternoon of errands, my son was in a tired and cranky mood. In his case more precisely, he was being very, very rigid. This is how my son deals with too much novelty in his life. He wants to control everything and everyone and he wants nothing to change. My daughter is more chaos-oriented, but that’s another story.
So I had the television on because I needed to unpack and they needed to decompress for a while. I pulled out the new underpants and my son wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. He yelled and said to throw them away. He threw them on the floor. I picked them up and started looking at the great super heroes on them and talking aloud to the underpants.
Then…he got interested. He got really interested. In, I swear, an hour, my son was completely obsessed with these six pair of underpants. He wanted to know what they each did and all sorts of things about them. By then I had learned I was in trouble.
You see, these underpants didn’t have a movie or a television show associated with them. There was no app for them either. Those were video game characters on my son’s new underpants—for a video game he couldn’t play at his age.
He carried the underpants downstairs. He told daddy which one he was and which one I was and which one his sister would be. He came up with gear for us to use based on the sole picture on the underpants. He was in full-on imagination mood and he was happy. He was so happy about these new characters.
Finally I had an idea, I sat him in front of my computer and found some video clips on the game site’s YouTube channel and let him learn about the characters some more. He paid rapt attention and absorbed it all.
The next day, he was so into the characters he managed to get five of the six pair of underpants on at the same time. He was particularly upset he couldn’t wear the sixth pair because they were dirty from the day before.
The Big Boy Update: In addition to being obsessed with the Skylander underpants as written above, my son has also admitted that he doesn’t want to go to the potty when he has a need. He holds it and eventually streaks his pants. He can only get a star for the day now if he doesn’t streak his pants. Also, if there is a chance to watch any television, he will not get to watch his favorite show (Transformers, Rescue Bots) if he’s done any streaking. He loves that show; I hope it’s some serious motivation to go to the bathroom.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: I went to the fitness room this afternoon and passed my children at the neighborhood pool with their sitters, Tristan and Morgan. My daughter was standing on Tristan’s shoulders and was very excited to be about to jump into the water.
Fitness Update: I ran a ten-minute mile today on a treadmill. Only one mile, but I don’t normally run that quickly when I’m just chatting and plodding along on the streets and the trail. It wasn’t that hard to run at the faster pace. It’s easier to run faster when the road is moving under you and you have to make a decision to push some buttons to slow down. When I’m propelling myself, I suppose I just slow down without paying attention.
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