Little Katcha is growing everyday. Which is just the way with kids. You feed them and water them and put them in the sun, and before you know it, they need new shoes. Along with the shodding, there’s also some good stuff. Katcha’s starting to show his imagination.
Last week when the little guy woke up, he must have been dreaming. A pretty vivid dream from what I could tell. He thought Muck was here in the house with us. Muck, if you don’t know, is one of Bob the Builders friends. Actually, Muck is a truck. He has a scoop on the front, but don’t get him confused with Scoop. Scoop is yellow and has another scoop on the back. They could have called him “Scoops”, but I guess that would just be dumb. Muck had a scoop too, but he’s a red dump truck. So it’s easy to tell Scoop from Muck. Katcha went looking around the house for Muck after he woke up. When he couldn’t find Muck, he, Katcha, decided he, Muck, went back to the yard with Bob for a nap. Then he has breakfast.
The most surprising this about this was that he was looking for Muck. I figured if he were to dream about any Bob the Builder friend, it would be Roley. Roley is Katcha’s favorite because Roley smashes things. So Katcha and Roley have that in common and it would give them something to talk about over juice boxes.
A couple days ago, Katcha (This is the last time I’m going to emboldenate Katcha’s name. You know who I’m talking about and I figure I’m pretty close to messing up the coding. So I’ll just stop now.) trotted out his imagination again. When we took Soupo (No, no emboldenation here either. Don’t tell Soup’ though, he might think I like his brother better, seeing how many times I emboldenated Katcha’s name and then didn’t emboldenate his name at all. Oh heck, Soupo. There.) we took Soupo to school (in case you got lost from that last parenthetical aside) Katcha hops out of the car with his fist clenched.
Now, when you see a two and a half year old boy get out of a car with his fist clenched you have to find out what they are holding. It could be just about anything. So I asked him “What do you have clenched in your fist, O progeny of mine?” And he says “Nothing” which really doesn’t mean squat, because you could catch him whacking Michelangelo’s statue of Moses with a hammer and ask him what he’s doing and he’d still say “Nothing”. “Nothing” is a meaningless response when it comes from a two and a half year old boy. Honestly, “Nothing” is a meaningless response when it comes out of any boy. So he says there is nothing in his hand and I, like a good parent, check it out anyway.
Hey! Whaddaya know! There’s actually nothing in there.
So we take Soupo to school and come back to the car (Because of the incredible lack of parking, we drive most of the way to school and park on a side street, then walk the rest of the way. If it was up to me I’d kick the boy out the door and let him get himself to school. But the Little Woman says he’s too small for that yet. So I take him to school. And we walk too.) and Katcha still has his fist clenched. I had a hold of his other hand the whole way, so I know he didn’t pick anything up, so I don’t grill him about his fist this time.
When we get home, he still has his fist clenched. Who knows what he grabbed there in the back seat, so I ask again, “What’s in your hand?” He tells me “A kitty!” and holds out his hand, palm up and says “Meow! Meow! Meow!” and then clenches his fist again. So the kitty doesn’t get away I guess.
He carried around his kitty all day in his fist. (It’s a real small cat, so it’s OK.) And every now and again the kitty would meow. (Meow! Meow! Meow!) He decided his cat was yellow and had blue eyes and it loved him. This was nice, an imaginary cat, pretty imaginative (by definition almost). It means he has a real big brain and will grow up to be real smart and get a good job and support me in luxury in my old age. All is well.
The kitty makes appearances on and off for about a week. Then one morning we hear Katcha playing in his bed with his kitty. “I poke you in da eye! I poke you in da eye kitty! Poke! Poke! Poke!” Now the kitty wears a teeny tiny imaginary eye-patch.
-Rue.
