72 posts tagged “family”
Last Christmas, if you'll recall, Aaron asked for earplugs. It's a tale worth recalling, because Aaron refused to ask Santa at the pharmacy (yes, Santa was at the pharmacy, probably got a touch of the ol' rheumatoid). Instead, he pulled Jenna away from the crowd of terrified children, bade her to lean in closer, pressed his lips right against her ear, and said, "BLUE EARPLUGS."
That was when Aaron was three. Does he still like earplugs?
Yes. Yes he does.
After a good week in preschool, Aaron got a special gift of a tiny can of earplugs. He was showing them off to me at dinner. They are hot pink -- his favorite color. The brand name is "Sleep Pretty in Pink earplugs." Jenna was relaying to me his pleasure at receiving a new batch of earplugs in the car. He opened the little canister and sighed, "Ohhhh, they're so squishy."
Over dinner, while he was lovingly squishing his earplugs, Aaron asked, "Why are they called earplugs?"
Jenna and I exchanged a glance.
"Huh," she replied. "That's a good question."
"We should try to find that out," I added.
"Do you think you're supposed to put them in your ear?" Aaron asked.
Glances were re-exchanged. "You shouldn't stick anything smaller than your elbow in your ear," Jenna said.
"I know, I know. I was just kidding," Aaron assured us.
So I'll have to add this to the list of things to discuss when Aaron's older. The truth about the tooth fairy, the birds and the bees, and the real purpose of earplugs.
So that part is the same. He still collects them, along with marbles, rocks, beads, and a bottle cap from a bottle of Spotted Cow. The new twist is that he keeps them in his motorboat.
The motorboat appeared one afternoon in the living room. It was a collection of all his favorite toys, books, clothes, toothpastes, pretend sandwich fixings, and shampoo piled into a laundry basket. He packs everything in, and uses a jumprope to tie a second box of goodies to it, including his earplugs.
We've since moved it to his bedroom, as it kept increasing in size. I'm not sure where the idea of a motorboat-as-emergency-shelter came from, but it's his new favorite thing to play. We all sit on his bed, and he drives his motorboat to the beach, and we have to survive there for 109 weeks, with only sandwich fixings to eat and only two kinds of toothpaste.
So he's made room on the ol' motorboat for a new pack of earplugs. I kind of dread the day that he wakes up and says, "Earplugs on a pretend motorboat? What was I thinking? I need Bionicle Sword Monsters."
Especially because I don't think Bionicle Sword Monsters are available in hot pink.
1. I am able to use my computer only by carefully moving around the power cord until the little blue battery light turns on, then slowly tucking the cord in that general position and not getting up too quickly. It's becoming tiresome, so I have turned to a better solution: a third-rate cheaply made substitute power cord! So when that arrives, I'll have no excuse for not using my computer except fear that it will cause fires/explosions/plague.
2. Today we went to the county fair. When I was growing up, county fair weekend was an instrumental part of my life, cementing my love of peach pie and kettle corn, double Ferris wheels and The Zipper, and of course, hastily thrown together musical theatre. We unfortunately forwent all of these experiences today, because I packed Aaron into the car and then left his sandals at home, so he was barefoot and urchin-like and I carried him around on my back as if I'd won him at the Skee-ball booth. Fortunately, you can take some satisfaction in knowing that we ate enough fried fried food to fell a fried horse. Then we had cookies and caramel apples for dessert. Please do not tell Wii Fit.
3. We have not had running water in the kitchen for a week now, because we had to disconnect the plumbing and remove the countertops in order to template our new countertops, and it didn't seem worth replacing it all only to tear it all out again in two weeks. That being said, I'm not overly fond of doing dishes in the bathroom sink and skipping the glass of water in favor of whatever cold liquids we have in the fridge, like Capri Sun Tropical Twist, or ketchup.
4. I'm super excited about this week. It contains waterparks, Harry Potter, Bill and Jessica, youthful exuberance, Guitar Hero with a full band(!), Milkweeds CD release, and Mad Men Season 2 DVD release! I refuse to even think about the fact that it's all downhill from here. Aw, crap.
5. I picked up a Cien Fuegos magazine this morning, and there, smack dab in the middle was my story about Microbreweries. Does this mean I can call myself a published writer? Can I get that tattooed in a ring around my navel? If not, I can always go with the ankle tattoo that says "Newsletter assembler and long-suffering Red Light/Green Light participant," but it lacks some of the panache.
This week has been hot. It's one of those jumps in temperature that happen every summer, when stepping outside hits you like a blast furnace (or as I called it in front of a bunch of HVAC folks, a "heat furnace" which is about the stupidest thing ever). The heat has a withering effect on you. If you're doing any lifting or walking, you're soaked and filthy in seconds, and generally miserable for the rest of the day, great rivers of sweat bloom in your armpits or drop from your forehead and somehow find their way into your mouth after a thorough tour of the inside of your nose. It is oppressive weather. It is Satan's weather.
But it does happen every summer. It is to be expected.
And I tend to get to this point in the summer and I want to throw in the towel. The sweat-stained, sand-encrusted, sad little towel. All my thoughts of "wait until summer, when we can finally have fun outside" have gone out the window. Or, in the window? Definitely through some kind of window of some sort.
What a waste. Summer is hot. It takes some getting used to, sure, but it's not a roadblock. It's not a mine shaft cave-in. It's tricky terrain. It's learning an alternate route. It's a taste that needs to be developed, like jalapenos or onions.
Or ras malai.
In celebration of Father's Day, (and let's be honest, because she found a recipe for it), Jenna made me a batch of ras malai, which is a homemade spongy cheese served in sweet milk, topped with pistachios. It was fantastic. Better than at the restaurant. And it's served chilled, so it's so refreshing on a hot day. We were both very excited about it. Aaron refused to touch it.
He might have been on board until he saw me shelling pistachios. The sight of that wrinkled green nut was enough to put him off ras malai and how.
Well, I reasoned, it's a dessert. And the kid eats a lot of sweets. No need to push another one on him. But at the same time, it's a new food. I know it can be tough for a four-year-old to take a chance on new foods. They've got so many taste buds at that age. They need to be meticulous, to treat each bud like a newly blooming flower, gentlly nourishing it with chicken nuggets and chocolate milk. And the occasional half chewed candy found in the dirt at the playground. And sometimes a key. Seriously, he says he swallowed a key. He won't eat a combination of dessert and cheese, the two best things ever and he's wolfing down a key?
I don't get it. But I figured if he's brave enough to eat keys, he should be brave enough to eat a new treat. We asked him, we told him he'd like it. We offered him to have just a tiny bite from our dish. And he blanched and turned his face away and informed us that ras malai, whatever else it may be, is also icky.
The bite on the spoon got smaller and smaller. "Just try it," we encouraged. "It's sweet, like cake."
And then he did. Truth be told, I was not expecting that. But he took the tiniest bite of ras malai, prepared to spit it right back onto the spoon, but he didn't. He liked it. He seemed as surprised as the rest of us. In fact, he asked for his own bowl. Just no pistachios.
Then yesterday, while he was at home with suspected pink eye (false alarm, and I can't figure out any way that could be related to swallowing a key), he tried a pistachio. After his success with the ras malai, it didn't take much convincing. I just told him it tasted like a moon nut, which is his phrase for cashew.
Once again, he loved it. He started shelling them himself, making a neat little pile of withered green nuts to pop into his mouth. I was excited for him.
And I've been thinking about it today, and I think it's pretty significant. You've got to trust someone an awful lot to take their word that something is going to taste good. And it's not like we've never steered him wrong before. He's spit out asparagus, sweet potatoes, even Super Nerds, which are my new favorite candy. But he was still willing to give these strange looking foods a shot, and all for the better. It turns out he liked them. Two new foods for us to put on the list of Things The Kid Likes To Eat.
As a parent, I think it's easy to get caught up in the Big Things. We've been talking up him writing the words "Stop" and "Go" all day. That's a big step for him. But just as important it's the little things. He takes the time to add two new foods to his repertoire. He learns to trust Mommy and Daddy's tastes one more time. He forges ahead in a situation that would be just as easy to back out of.
Which brings me back to the heat furnace. (Good grief.) Yes it's too hot today. But then, after that, it's too rainy. And then it's too buggy. And then it's too windy. And then it's too cold again, because summer is passed and we're all a little older. Might as well play outside. Take a chance that you'll find something you like out there despite the urge to spit the day back onto the plate. Maybe you'll get to add one more day to the list of Days the Grownup Really Likes.
And if today is not that day, so be it. Console yourself with some comfort food. Just don't eat a key.
Aaron is insistent that we play games whenever we're in the car. This may be because he doesn't like my music selection, although what child doesn't like Cloud Cult and Weird Al Yanokovic?
Anyway, his first choice is a game called "All my characters and powers" in which Aaron is an oddly named superhero. For a long time, Aaron was Color-Man, with the power of his favorite colors: Purple, Blue, Yellow, Brown, and Pink. Then he was FlowerMan, HoneyMan, HandMan, ShareMan, CrayonMan and now SwordMan.
My role in this game is to be either the bad guy or the good guy. If I laugh maniacally, Aaron will inform me that I'm supposed to be a good guy. If I say "SwordMan, help me!" he will inform me that I'm supposed to be a bad guy. Other than that, the rules are simple, Aaron has a million powers and a hundred friends with all the same powers, and hundreds of millions of super-powered dogs, all named Bolt. They are all impervious to any kind of attack. As a bad guy, I get to try to get SwordMan, and Aaron will tell me that I missed or that he has a magic shield or that the curse bounced off him and hit me instead. Then Aaron uses friendship power, and I immediately become his friend and get all of his powers and then we plan a picnic.
Sometimes I tell him that if he wants to defeat me, he has to spell superhero words like "Pit" or "Hop". However, he knows learning when he sees it, and steadfastly refuses. At that point, we usually have to pick another game.
Last weekend, we were playing I Spy, and he was describing something brown and on a building. The answer was: our car. Which is blue. Apparently we were driving too quickly to see the brown building cover, so Aaron switched things up on the fly. Jenna guessed it right, and Aaron was very pleased with her work. He informed her enthusiastically that she was the queen of I Spy. Jenna was about to thank him when he continued, "And that means you can't guess the next one. Queens only sit in their chair all day. They can't play games."
So I played I Spy, and Aaron was the only one allowed to guess. He got it right. (The answer was pancake.)
But I was struck by something. He eliminated his competition by promoting her.
He could write his own business self-help book.
We are just returning from celebrating my godson Luke's first birthday party. As dictated by family tradition, he shared his birthday with his sister. It was a very nice party, with some really top notch cake and fun gift bags (although I have learned not to kick off a two hour car trip with Aaron with a pack of Pixie Sticks).
The icing on the cake, though, (other than the literal icing on the cake) was a bouncy castle in the front yard. Apparently the neighbors have a bouncy castle they keep around just in case of emergency. For example, if something gets stuck on the roof, or if the world experiences a tragic trampoline shortage or if someone has just given a four year old a pack of Pixie Sticks and intends on going on some kind of car trip of some length. And they let Katie borrow it for the party. The party theme, by the way, was Princesses and Princes and the Castles they live in and sometimes also Winnie the Pooh. So there were prince and princess crowns and a princess/Pooh cake and this enormous yellow and purple castle for kids to jump jumpjumpjump in.
It was inspired.
Neighbors found their way to this party. It was like having a church festival in your front yard, except real cake instead of funnel cake. And no Bingo. It was like a McDonald's playland where you only let in kids you like. It was like the Summer Olympics, except instead of athletes in specially made swimwear swimming in Olympic-sized swimming pools, it was children wearing foam rubber crowns and bouncing in an enormous Bouncy Castle.
Every once in a while, two kids would slam into each other, or bounce on someone else's hair, and there would be about thirty seconds of great, teary yowls until the kid realized she or he was in a bouncy castle, and if you're cryin', you ain't bouncin', and then the fun would continue.
"Well," Katie would say, "Who wants to eat cake?"
Well, all the kids wanted to. Kids love cake. But if you give a three-year-old (or two-year-old or four-year-old) a choice between building up energy by eating sugar or burning off energy by jumping in a giant fricking bouncy castle, they will totally pick door number two. They ate their cake quickly, knowing when they were done, they'd get dessert, and dessert is jumping for forty minutes straight.
And get this: they're in an enclosed area, they're loathe to cry even if they slam into another kid, and they're surrounded by big puffy walls. The parents were totally free to do anything they wanted! I could have brought a cryptic crossword book!
Needless to say, I had a wonderful time. Aaron had a wonderful time. And even better, a bouncy castle is excellent practice for the rubber room we'll both be in if I ever give him Pixie Sticks before driving home again.
1. Aaron's had a cough for about three months. Being a good, responsible parent, I knew that when a young child has a hacking cough for more than 90 days, it's time to consult a physician. I brought him into the pediatrician's office and told them I was there for Aaron's 90-day cough examination, and they looked at me with such pride. Anyway, Aaron sat very still for the stethoscope, and did just a fantastic job of breathing. Top notch breather, my kid. He was a huge hit. The pediatrician thought it might not be a bad idea to send him in for a chest X-ray, and again, Aaron did a fantastic job. He stood in exactly the position the technician told him to stand. He wore the little lead kilt. He was such a trooper. X-rays showed nothing wrong, so we tested him for asthma. What the hell, we had the whole afternoon to kill. So he stuck his finger in the asthma tester and spent twenty minutes breathing whatever strange root and grub combo that they boil to make inhalers. While he breathed into the noisy boiling mask, I read him Clifford's Easter, and then, Clifford's Christmas. He sat quietly and listened to the story, and waited patiently while the doctor tested him again. He was unbelievable. I took him out for ice cream after that. And then we went home and played Mario. And dude. He threw such a fit when I couldn't get the star. It's like he had been holding it in all day.
2. We held a party on Saturday. It's the first time we've invited neighbors over for anything. Oh, and by we, I mean Jenna, since it was mostly neighborhood moms. So of course Saturday is the worst snowstorm we've had all year. We got six inches of snow, and several guests, including Jenna's parents, couldn't make it. That meant that the quick job I was hoping to make of repairing the garbage disposal with them was put off. But that was OK. Also, the roof started leaking. It has never leaked before. Never shown any sign of starting to leak, but about an hour before the guests were supposed to arrive we had a steady drip going right into the kitchen. I ran out to clear it up as best as I could. And in the end, we got by without a garbage disposal and the roof hasn't leaked since, but I'm a little shaken. This was our big opportunity to show off to the neighbors. Will we be known as the leaky house with the slow-draining sink that causes snowstorms for the rest of our lives?
3. One of my professors is talking me in to enrolling in graduate school for reals. OK, I thought, I can do that. But the application materials are due by Friday. So that's what I'm doing this week.
4. You can get Cella's on sale at Menards. They are 79 cents. Seriously, you guys. Sure, they've been sitting there since Thanksgiving, but they are seventy-nine fricking cents! Also, hats for a buck! Also, Cella's!
5. I really like Fiber plus bars from Kellogg's. We were staring every morning with a fiber plus bar and things seemed so simple, so joyful. Now, there is no place in town that carries them. We've got all these coupons for a dollar off, and we can't get them anywhere. I checked six places yesterday. Six! Huge gaping holes on shelves, but no fiber bars. It's like those damn Starbucks drinks. We checked Target twice a week for three months looking for the lite ones. Found them once. Why have you abandoned me diet foods that I like?!
Maybe I'll go eat a Cella.
1. We bought a desk. It's only been four years since I told Jenna I'd get her one. However, the busted tabletop balanced precariously on two filing cabinets was just so attractive I could never bear to replace it. Here's the thing, though. Jenna dropped off her purse in the house and came back out to help me bring it in from the car. Aaron was mad at us because, well, because he was cranky. And he locked us out. He seriously did. He locked the deadbolt and the lock on the doorknob, and neither of us had keys. Then, when we told him that this was a very dangerous thing to do, he relented, but couldn't get the door unlocked. I went around to the front door and tried to get him to open that, because all three of us were pretty well freaked out at that point. He managed to get that one open. I let Jenna in, we got the desk in, and Aaron went to time out. He spent the rest of the evening being a royal snot. I had to actually physically throw his toys away in front of him to let him know that his actions had terrible consequences. It was horrible. I just about lost it.
2. However, I still love the guy. He knows what he wants, and he tries so hard to get it. It's admirable. He's been very affectionate when he's not locking us out of the house. Also, he's been working on his Ls. He still has trouble with the Ls and the Rs, so when I write, for example, that he shouts, "Do all the girls here have little babies in their tummies?" at church, it should really be read, "Do ow the goes heeu have yiddow babies in thayow tummies?" But lately, he's realized that this means people can't tell if he's describing something as lucky or as yucky. So he's really working o that one word. "Mommy," he said. "I bwought my Lllllucky maobow (marble) to day cayow so I could have a Lllllucky day with my Lllllucky maobow." And then he gets this look of sheer pride on his face. It was adorable. I almost lost it.
3. I helped put a floor in at the neighbors' house over the weekend. It's like assembling an enormous puzzle, but all of the pieces fit everywhere. It's remarkably easy, with one condition: The room needs to be the exact same shape and size as the flooring you put in. If you have, say, a closet, or a heat register, or multiple rooms that need a continuous floor, it's really, really complicated. I was thinking maybe for our house, we'll just dump some quick-drying glue on the carpet and stain it and hope people don't notice the difference.
4. All of the (Cost Plus) World Markets in Minnesota are closing, so everything there is some percent off. I took advantage of the 10% off European candy so I could try a Yorkie bar. The thing about Yorkie bars is that they're very specific that this is a chocolate bar for men. No girls allowed. It says so right on the packaging. It's even got the lady from the bathroom door sign in a circle with a slash through it. (She's holding a purse.) Naturally I feared that all other men have been enjoying this candy bar without me for years and that's why I've never really gotten into NASCAR, so I bought one. It was a puzzle. There was no ingredient that would seem to set it apart for men, like, for example, beer. Or jerky. It was plain chocolate. Also, it's called Yorkie which, let's face it, doesn't rank very high on the list of manly dogs. But one bite and I figured out what the deal was. It's a big fat hunk of chocolate. It's not made for people who don't want melted chocolate all over their fingers or who are watching their figure or who enjoy the taste of chocolate. It's there for people who want to cram some form of junk food into their digestive systems. You gnaw off a hunk of Yorkie and laugh triumphantly, like a lumberjack who has cut down a sequoia made of pure adamantium, and you spray a little bit on your foes when you laugh. "I have eaten of the Yorkie," your manly voice booms. "And it was very eaten." So it was pretty good, but not as good as Pocky for Men.
5. Still looking for a job. Now alongside millions more people. This economy is deplorable. I can't wait to lose it.
After I read the story, and sang the song, and turned out the light, I came out to the living room. In about three minutes, I heard a door opening, and Aaron gradually emerged into view.
"Daddy, I can't sleep. It's too lonely," he said.
"Well it's past your bedtime. Let's go back to your room together," I told him.
We made our way back to his room, and he crawled back into bed. He pulled the two knit blankets up to his chin. Lately, he's made a big deal about wanting to be cool at night, even when the house is freezing, so I've let him use the knit blankets because they have holes in them, to keep him nice and cool. He also asks me to turn down the thermostat.
Tonight, he stared up at me from his covers and said, "I'm good with a lot of the friends at daycare, but it's hard at night, because I don't have anyone in my bed like you have Mommy in your bed."
Aaron's been trying very hard to learn the rules of sleep the last couple of weeks. He has been sneaking into our room at about 2AM every night, and I'm sure he is trying to mark the time it takes before we get tired of being kicked and bring him back to his bed. He's also protested loudly about the indignities of being made to sleep during the day at daycare. It's to the point where he gets a book and lies down for ten minutes until the other kids go to sleep, then he gets up and quietly does a puzzle.
It reminds me of last year, when I watched Aaron during the day and I tried to coax him into taking a nap so I could have just half an hour to myself to try to write or clean or nap myself. That nap time was so precious to me then, and it seems very different now to have hours, even the better part of a day when I'm home alone. Like Aaron, I become acutely aware of the emptiness around me, and just like he tries to fill the night with something other than sleeping, I end up wiling away a lot of time with little writing actually being done. Today I loudly mocked a cookie when I decided to put it away instead of snacking. For about five minutes. The emptiness can drive people to do strange things.
I told Aaron, "You have Donald Duck, and all your animal friends."
"That's not the same, Daddy. They're not real."
"You're right," I told him. "But you can pretend."
"No, I'm lonely," he sighed.
"Well, learning to be alone is something we all have to do," I told him. "It's not easy, but there are times when you're the only person around, and you have to learn to get along with yourself. If you can't get along with yourself, then it's very hard to get along with other people. It's not easy, but someday it will get easier. You can use the time to think about what you did today, and what you'd like to do tomorrow. You can think about things that you like, and things you'd like to do better. For most things, all it takes to be better is time to practice and time to think."
I'm sure this went over his head.
However, Aaron has been making great strides, the kinds I've been hoping that he would make as an only child. He's gotten much better at sharing with other kids. And when I'm not playing choo-choos with him, he'll play by himself. It's unspeakably thrilling to hear him mutter little phrases with his superhero trains. "Here we go!" and "Let's save the day!" and "It's time for superpowers!" all kind of stand out among the jumble of whispers and choo-choo noises. He'll even sit down with a book and page through it, desperate to decipher the secrets behind the letters. It reminds me of the thrill I got from learning to read words and the secondary thrill I got from discovering that you can't unlearn to read. Once you can piece it together, it's yours.
I turned on his nightlight and checked for monsters. He didn't say anything else about being lonely. He did call me in about ten minutes later. He had used his belt to tie a bridge from one side of his bed to the other. "Now I won't fall out of bed!" he assured me.
He's never fallen out of bed before.
Strange things.
I've been back and forth a few times. Every time he calls me, I get up to go see what's going on. I probably don't need to. He's tired enough that he'll eventually fall asleep if I don't come in. But as long as I keep getting up, I don't have to stare at the blank page on my laptop.
It's not easy, but someday it will get easier.
In the meantime, I may have to go and wipe the smile off that cookie's face.
I'm following in Aaron's footsteps. Here are the characters I've portrayed this week:
1. Board member. Technically, I'm not on the board, but the annual meeting is in two weeks, and I solved the sphinx's riddle and stole the bells from the board president's hand without ringing any so I'm as good as in. I haven't been to a board meeting for a non-profit since the smokey cevapci-filled days of 2004, so it will be interesting to note the similarities and hopefully the differences on this new board.
2. Student. Tomorrow I register for classes at the college Jenna teaches at. Which means the next time she gripes about students I'll have to face up to the fact that she's really griping about me. However, since she's been griping lately about how the students have been leaving no gas for her in the car and not doing dishes often enough and spending too much money on Cella's, I think she may have been doing this all along.
3. Book-club member. I've never been in a book club before. Jenna and I are tag teaming this one so one of us can watch Aaron while the other attends. I'm looking forward to it.
4. Freelance writer. Sort of. Maybe. I did do some writing and not get paid for it!
5. Cewebrity. (Jenna calls it weblebrity). My Vox neighbor Sara did a post about Hippo Profiles, which was completely awesome, especially as it followed a Star Wars story she wrote when she was ten that could very well have been a story I myself wrote when I was 16. She also had some nice things to say about me. Sara was the blogger who nominated me for a [this is good] and the only person in the history of time immemorial who thinks it would be fun to be at a campfire singalong with me even after finding out that I only know the Weird Al versions of songs and I add childish rhymes to well-known Simon and Garfunkel tunes. There have been many days where I get frustrated with blogging, and her coments always get my spirits up again. Always, even when she threatens to eat my child's face. I don't comment as often as I should, and I just wanted to say thanks for reading, and thanks for posting.
There was a time that I used to stare into bustling crowds of humanity and wonder if they had secret lives. What are their stories, who are they when no one is watching, how do they hide their stories? How can I tell which ones lead exciting double or even triple lives? I don't wonder anymore. The question has been answered.
These mysterious folks will simply introduce themselves by saying, "I am a THREE... CHARACTER... PERSON!"
At least, that's what Aaron does.
They probably continue much like he does, by numbering the characters. "One! Superhero! Two! Detective! Three! Superhero! Wait, what was three? Superspy? Okay, one! International Superspy! Two! Superhero! Three! Detective!"
I am still trying to figure out where this is all coming from. I don't even know where he learned the word "character". As far as I can tell, the superspy came from Pablo the Penguin's masterful portrayal as Agent Secret on Backyardigans. Superhero came from the neighbors' favorite movie (and subsequently Aaron's favorite movie) The Incredibles. And the detective part comes from the fact that he thinks his hat looks like a detective's hat.
I would imagine that life would be difficult for a detective who moonlighted as a superhero, and ludicrously complicated for a superhero detective who was channeling James Bond, but Aaron pulls it off with aplomb.
As a superhero, Aaron is quick to set parameters. He's tried out a few different superpowers, but he keeps coming back to the ones he could feasibly argue that he really has. So lightning power and telekinesis are out, because he's never really shot lighting from his fingers and he has no idea what telekinesis is. These superpowers have been reassigned to his choo-choos, including Flying Thomas, Cold Percy, Hot Percy, and Clean Percy. As it stands right now Aaron has five superpowers: (He came up with the number on his own, in case you were wondering.)
"One! Super Strong!
Two! Super Fast!
Three! Super Smart!
Four! Friendship!
Five! Statue!"
He had Super Stretchy in for a while, but since he couldn't really stretch the way Elastigirl could, he wanted to replace it with a real power. He picked Statue. I asked if he could really turn into a statue. He said nothing and stood perfectly still for six seconds. Bravo, I told him.
He also wanted to add a new power called Super Strenk. I think it was because he didn't know that Super Strong and Super Strength were the same thing. Super Strenk replaced Super Smart. No, really. In my role as eternal supervillain, I convinced him that Super Smart was a better asset than Super Strenk, and as soon as he used his Super Smart powers to make a decision, he agreed. His list has been pretty well set ever since.
In fact, the only other addition was that when he came up with friendship, he suddenly had a superhero team to back him up. For some reason, the rest of his justice league had six (undefined) powers. He continued with five. Apparently having five loudly named powers trumps six unknown pretend powers any day.
When we play superhero, I make sure that friendship is always the most effective power, instantly calling off my evil pinecone army and sap-shooter (I was being Coniferous Man) and immediately extending an olive branch, as it were. However, friendship is the power he most rarely uses. "Friendship is for when the other powers don't work," he told me. I wanted to correct him, and tell him to try friendship first, but I've read comic books. I know the Superhero Code. The strength is really the feather in any superhero's cape. You've got to show off a little bit of the Super Strenk to get those innocent bystanders to give you some love.
This naming of superpowers and assigning of villains and final resorting to friendship all leaves little time for the other two characters, so he wraps detective and superspy together a little. As a non-superhero, he spends most of his time looking for clues and singing "International SU-PER-SPYYYYYYY!
So life is busy for a three(!) character(!) person(!), but fortunately, among the solving of mysteries and the defeat of evil and the blowing cover by singing that he's a spy, a fourth character will sometimes emerge.
The fourth character has no powers and no cool hat. However, he does like to snuggle on the couch and read stories together and say "I love you, mommy and daddy. I hundred times love you." For a three-year-old, a hundred times is an awful lot.
Even for a three character person.
