Mom Moments

My preschooler has some interesting quirks.  When he was a baby, he didn’t have a favorite stuffed animal or a blankie.  Jason’s thing was “a penny and a pencil”. 

I don’t know how he came to lock in on these items, but the boy could not function without a penny and a pencil. 

People would say “Miss, look out your baby got hold of a pencil” and “Oh no your baby has a penny!”  Valid concerns, he could poke his eye out (with the pencil, not the penny) or swallow the penny (not the pencil).

He loved these items so much, that he ended up with a green circle in the middle of his hand from the penny tarnishing.

Somehow, that ended, and he decided he now loved all things multiple.  Because we had 2, then 3 kids, we have lots of multiples.  So the good thinking for 2 or 3 kids of “I’ll buy one for each of them, no arguing”, became bad thinking. 

If there was one of something, OK, there’s one.  But if there were three, Jason needed to have all three, much to the chagrin of his siblings.  We go to a swim class, and somebody had donated a bunch of The Rescuers Down figures to the prize box.  Every week he chose the same little Rescuer character until the box was empty but his toybox was full of them.

Now his interest is the color orange.  Anything and everything orange.  It must be his.  He wears a Cleveland Browns ballcap because its orange.  My older boys share a room, and I had to work orange into the color scheme to please him.  (I overruled his desire for having every item orange).

I realized the seriousness of his love of orange when he traded all of the fruit snacks from his package, for the two orange ones in his brother’s bag.  He was perfectly happy just having four orange pieces of candy, while his brother chowed down on the other twenty or so of various colors.

And I *so* know who I am sitting beside the next time we get a bag of M&Ms.