Last night Moriarty brought external evidence into a discussion. We were reading a book about excavators and discussing the technical names for the parts. We were clarifying an arm vs. a boom (though Pip and I weren’t confident, but were following the book’s terms). Moriarty insisted it was called a boom not an arm. We disagreed and pointed out the book’s claims. He replied with “Well, Blippy says that the excavator has a boom”. Blippy is a youtube personality who does children’s shows, mostly about trucks. Though Moriarty doesn’t watch a lot of TV, he’s confident in Blippy as an authority on trucks. I was just blown away that he disagreed with us and brought evidence to the discussion. He’s also started using our speech patterns. He’ll say “you guys” to get our attention or recently “no worries” when something falls.
The fall season has brought some fun firsts. We did pumpkin carving. He picked the pattern and I did most of the cutting. We also went to a local farm for a fall festival. There was pumpkin throwing (with catapults), farm animals, a vintage tractor & boat, and a hay ride. Moriarty was too anxious about the hay ride so he didn’t do that part. Halloween was spent with his cousins, the Roberts’. He hadn’t really had any candy before this so he didn’t really care about getting a lot of candy. But he was insistent on holding it all in his hands. So he’d walk up to a door, they’d open and offer candy but his hands were already full. Then he’d just look at them as though something else was going to happen. It was really fun.
For the second year in a row we’ve brought him to collect donations for Northwest Harvest, our local food bank. Last year he was mostly in a backpack carrier and functioned as a prime tool of manipulation! This year I tried to prep him with phrases like “Kids need food”, but he mostly ran up and down the sidewalk giggling and standing in front of the motion-activated doors making them open over and over. He did ask Pip to give him some money so he could buy food for the kids with it. So precious. I want to expose him to this stuff even if he doesn’t really get it yet.
The Frozen obsession hasn’t ended. His favorite is “the man song”, which is really the opening song where the men cut the ice. He likes to use his shovel (and anything else handy) to cut the ice while he sings. He isn’t interested in the Disney movies enough to actually watch them all the way through, but that’s OK. He loves the music and we love singing it with him.
Oh, and like all pre-schoolers, sometimes he just makes NO sense.