Yesterday

Something's clicked in Sawyer's mind recently. It's as though he finally has enough life perspective to grasp the concept of then and now. We've been in Colorado for six months. But, in the past few weeks he's suddenly started remembering things about his old school, his old friends, his old house. We'll be driving down the road and he'll bust out with a story about how last Easter the Bunny hid eggs at the playground of his old school — "The big school." Or, we'll be reading a book about best friends and he says: "That's me and Oscar." We had talked about Oscar being his best friend .... oh ... about a year ago when we read that book. We've read it a hundred times since, and Oscar has never been mentioned. The last two weeks he's wanted to read the book every night, but he insists that I substitute the names Sawyer and Oscar wherever it says Jack and Dan. And, tonight, we had company for dinner. Scott's coworker. And Sawyer, who by-the-way is the world BIGGEST chatterbox whenever we have company around, told him that we just moved. "We got on an airplane and came to Colorado and we never went back. We don't live in the red house anymore. We live in this house." He talks about the red house a lot. It's nothing sad, I don't think. Even though I sometimes feel a little sad hearing him talk about it. I think it's just a shoulder-shrugging matter of fact for him. He understands, now. And he's letting us know.

Sawyer still struggles to express himself sometimes, but that doesn't stop him from talking. And talking. And talking. Oh man, when he gets going it's hysterical. Tonight, at dinner, he literally carried the conversation for a hour straight, only stopping when we insisted he take bites. Meanwhile, Arden sat on the other side of the table stuffing her face and making sweet faces at Scott's coworker, totally winning him over with her silent charm and flirtatious smiles. Our guest asked Sawyer what sports he likes and Sawyer said he likes skiing and jumping like the kid on t.v. (We'd just shown him a video of 10-year-old Birk Irving a little grom from Winter Park). He said that when he gets bigger he wants to play hockey and ski and jump. He talked about what he wants to be when he grows up (it's a long list starting with digger driver and ending with airplane pilot); and about how, if he ate any more his stomach would get too big and pop and that would be bad; he got off on a morbid tangent that if Duncan bit his hand off (there was a related incident with a piece of bacon shortly before) that he wouldn't be able to feel anything and that his mom would have to take him to the doctor to have a new hand put on; and, I feel quite certain there was some talk about poop and butts in there — because he's three and there's always talk about poop and butts. That big run-on sentence doesn't even begin to cover the breathless conversation he carried on with our guest. He's like this around all our friends now, especially when they come to our house. Can you say EXTROVERT? He literally sucks energy off of other people. And, all I can say is that it's exhausting.