Wednesday, February 03, 2010

My Favorite Kind of Conversations

I haven't written much about it, but Ethan seemed to have grown overnight. All of a sudden, he's holding his own in our conversations ranging from extraterrestrial beings, homework, and well, poop.

My favorite kind of conversations happen mostly in the car. I love our drive to school every morning because that's my 30-minute one-on-one with Ethan. We sing, we laugh, we drive up next to Mike or perfect strangers and wave or make funny faces, we blast the Kids Place Live channel on Sirius and put the Chipmunk or Spongebob song on repeat 5x or until we find something else to obsess about. Most importantly, we talk.

Yesterday, we were on our way home from my mom's house, it was pushing 9pm and I didn't expect to get much out of my usual "How was your day?" conversation starter, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Me: How was school?

Ethan: Good...

Me: Did you learn anything new today?

Ethan: No.

Me: Are you still learning about dinosaurs?

Ethan: No. We're learning about outer space now.

Me: Oh that sounds cool. What did you learn about.... [interupted]

Ethan: Mommy, why are there hearts in my classroom?

Me: Those are for Valentine's Day.

Ethan: What's Valentine's Day?

Me: Valentine's Day is a day of love......

Ethan: What's love?

I had to pause for a minute. How exactly do you explain love to a 4-year-old?

Me: Mommy loves Ethan. Daddy loves mommy. It's when you care for someone, or when you are nice..... [interupted again]

Ethan: Is love like kissing and getting married?

Me: [chuckling] That's part of love, yes, like mommy and daddy. But you don't have to kiss someone to love them.....

Ethan: Kara kissed me today.

Me: What?!?!?!? Who kissed you?

Ethan: Kara did. I was going down the slide... and I got down. She kissed me then she ran away.

Me: Did she kiss you on the lips?!?!?

Ethan: No. Just on the cheek.

Me: Does that mean she loves you, Ethan?

Ethan: No. [pausing for a second] It just means........ it just means she likes me, and not Jacob.

Curious... I started to ask Ethan about the preceding moments before the "kiss". Was it provoked? Did she kiss any other kids? Did she say anything before she ran away? Is she older or younger?

At this point, I realize my voice started to raise a little (pure excitement on my silly part) but may have been miscontrude as aggressive or lecturing even. As I quickly reached for my phone to call Mike and tell him about this very important news, Ethan started to retract and blush (4 year olds blush?!?!?!) and explicitly said, "No! Don't tell daddy!"

Poor thing. I thought it was the cutest thing in the world, and I didn't realize I was barraging him with so many questions like I was interrogating a terrorist. He thought he had done something wrong......

Me: It's ok that Kara kissed you Ethan. Maybe she's just trying to be your friend (I ommitted the "girl" part. I didn't want to implant the notion. After all, he's not allowed to date until after college.)

Ethan: Ok, you can tell daddy Kara kissed me.

He chuckled.

2 comments:

Eleanor Holm said...

Love it! He's growing up too fast!

Unknown said...

ahahahahaa... PIMP

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails