Kid Amnesiac

The yin-yang of big kid-little kid with Simon has reached dizzying heights. Consider today:

1. I catch Simon singing the theme song to the “Men in Blazers” show. These are two British expats who do a podcast and television show about football, or as they like to mockingly say, “saaaacker”. If that doesn’t sound like a kid show, it’s because it’s not.

2. Then Simon watches Jeopardy and gets the question about what constellation the star Betelgeuse is in correct. If you guessed Orion, you got it right, too. This does not strike me as second-grade knowledge.

3. Then Simon lights our Chanukah menorah and sings the blessing all by himself, in Hebrew. We’ve been working on that for about a week now, but he still seemed very grown up while doing it.

4. So what happens next? He pretends Dolphie (his stuffed dolphin/alter ego) loses a tooth, takes a candy cane out of treat bag and a dollar out of his change jar, and puts both in his tooth pillow. He goes on to carefully place the tooth pillow under his own, all the while adjuring me to NOT spoil the secret about the Tooth Fairy or Santa for Dolphie, since she still believes.

That is some straight up kid stuff right there. I am curious as to why Dolphie is a girl and why she believes in Santa, but I’ve learned not to ask too many questions where Dolphie is concerned.

I have also learned that Simon’s reverence for Dolphie waxes and wanes like a moon cycle. A week or so ago, Matt was teasing Simon by being mean to Dolphie. According to Simon, Dolphie was very upset and felt unloved in our house. At the time, Simon seemed very upset, too. So I did what any rational parent would do: I staged a family counseling session with Matt, Simon,  Dolphie, and me. I played the part of counselor and Dolphie, and poor Matt could barely make it through he was laughing so hard.

For a time, my problem of nightly Simon-Dolphie-Matt battles were over. Then Simon decided that family counseling sessions with Dolphie are fun and funny, so he’s spent the last several days setting Matt up to get him into trouble in the hope I will insist on more therapy.

And that about sums up my life about now where Simon is concerned. I live with a Jeopardy watching, numbers crunching, soccer obsessed mini-adult who also happens to spend a lot of time imagining and acting out the life of his alter-ego (or daemon familiar if you’ve read the Philip Pullman books) rainbow colored stuffed dolphin.

Nothing to see over here, folks.