Minute Details

If you are Brian Jr., you are something different on any given day. Maybe a football player, or a golfer, a fire fighter, a police officer, a chef, a construction worker, an astronaut and even an FBI agent. Over the last year or so his imagination has become closer to real life. Before he would be Batman or Spiderman or Buzz Lightyear. Now the characters that he portrays are usually not fictional.

Most days he drives me crazy - the outfits/costumes have to be just right. We laughed last weekend at the Delaware football game when we saw Joe with black ankle supports on. Brian had been dressing up in his Delaware uniform and put black sweat bands around his ankles. We thought he was crazy because we had no idea why he had sweat bands on his ankles! But he knew better.

He tries to come up with imaginative ways to be as realistic as possible. He even wears a few layers of clothes under his astronaut uniform - He says, "To make it look big and puffy like it does in space!" He has to wear cleats with baseball and football uniforms, work boots when he is using tools and rain boots when he is a fire fighter! Sometimes even Sean gets fed up with Brian's pretending -

Brian on the way to CCD (religious education), referring to his cousin Joe who plays football for the University of Delaware -
Brian - "I am Joe going to church school."
Sean - lets out a huge sigh
Brian - "Sean you can be another Delaware player."
Sean - rolling his eyes - "Brian, I am just a kid going to church school. Can't you just be a kid today?"

Both of the boys pick up on such minute details because they are seeing many things in life for the first time. Most adults take for granted what we see. We have all seen a football uniform and just skim over it - but kids see the exact pattern on the helmet, the color of the stripe on the pants, the color of the socks and cleats - and even ankle supports! They amaze me on the things that they can remember. Sometimes I can barely remember the event, let alone the color of the collar on the dog we saw at a park six months ago! But they can!

I remember one time they wanted to go to a specific place for dinner. They were describing it as the place with the black and white squares on the floor, the red seats, and the motorcycles that were in the parking lot. Brian and I had no idea what they were talking about - we thought that they were making it all up!

Then a few months later we returned to that diner. I walked in and immediately knew this is the place they were talking about - the floor was black and white tiles, the booths were red, and last time we were here there were a few motorcycles parked out front. I felt so bad for not believing them! But the last time we where in the diner was almost a year before this!

My father- in-law has always said, in reference to children, "Be careful, they are smarter than you!" He said his father told him this when he had kids - I think they might be onto something!