"When I Was a New Kid"

We hear the sentence "When I was a new kid" about a hundred times a day around here. It is how Drew starts about 90 percent of his stories, and he tells a lot of stories. All day long we hear about the experiences he had when he was a new kid. According to him he lived in Africa, had 21 brothers and sisters and a mom who was very different from me. If you believe in such things I guess you could say he is remembering his previous life/lives. I don't really fly that way though. I have another more practical theory. He is constantly bombarded with new information from the adults in his life. Along wtih the new info he receives he also hears a lot about things that happened when he was a baby or before he was born etc. I think his New Kid stories are his way of having his own stories to tell and getting to feed us new information the way we feed it to him. It's his way of feeling like one of the grown-ups.



Most of the time I listen very intently and ask questions and try to let his creative juices flow when he tells me a story. I know that he is creating a world that is all his own where he gets to decide what happens and I respect that. But there are days when I really hate his "other" mom. She is apparently way cooler than I am. For instance she used to be a super hero. I have no powers to speak of other than my power to make him do things he just doesn't want to. She also took him to the beach a lot more often than I do. I actually find myself resenting this way cooler mom that he sometimes enjoys a lot more than he does me. How ridiculous is it for me to have resentment toward an imaginary mom? Is this a sign of some serious insecurity on my part? Or maybe I'm just tired of hearing the "New Kid" stories over and over and over again. Either way its one of those little quirks about Drew that I know we will miss when he is older. I will continue to listen to him talk about his other mom as enthusiastically as possible because you know what? He's talking to me, and he loves it and I don't want that to EVER go away.

The House of Brotherly Love

No words necessary. Just images of the love that is oozing around this house. Who knew they would dig each other so much? Brotherly love abounds around here!