Siu Jeun is my freshly-minted 4 year old. He is the most stereotypical “boy” I have ever met, and yet…he is so completely him.
He crawls into bed with me nearly every morning, before dawn. This morning I didn’t even wake up when he wriggled under the covers. Around 7:45, when we both agreed it was time to get up, I started talking to him about his new little sister (coming soon!) and how he’d have to be careful after she was born. “She might already be in the bed…and you’d squish her!” He sat up, put one finger up in the air, and solemnly said, “Well….’den…..I dec’ware she should sleep in her c’wib!” (Yes, dude. And you should sleep in your bed. But life doesn’t always work like that, now does it??)
After breakfast, he was playing on the floor with a toy. “Mommy? Does the baby have a name yet?” “Nope, buddy. We haven’t picked one yet.” “Oh, well…then we should call her Norman Price, ok??!”
Last night, his sister got her nails trimmed, and then asked for some sparkly purple polish for New Years. I put it on her, and then turned to SJ – it was his turn for a trim. As I finished up, he said, “Mommy? I want some nail po’wish on my toes!!” Well, dude….sure. It’s winter, you’ll be wearing socks…nobody will see them to make comments. (I’m not so much worried about the polish as I am about…well, it’s almost always dark colors, and it looks like someone slammed all his fingers and toes in a door! It’s even worse if I only do one nail, so I have to do all 10 to make it at least look intentional.) As I finished up, he held his foot out appreciatively and gasped. “Mommy! My toes ‘wook ‘wike…….DARKNESSSSSSS!!!!” Yup – that’s my dude.
A few weeks ago, he was upstairs playing with his sister. She must have started a game of dress up, because he came to the top of the stairs in the absolute frilliest, fluffiest petticoat she had in her stash. It was lemon yellow, with hot pink trim. “Daddy! ‘Wook at me!!” Before daddy could even protest, he started spinning around as fast as he could. As the skirt spun away from him, forming a perfect circle around his whirling body, he shouted, “‘Wook!! I’m a BEYBLADE!!”
Little Siu Jeun has the uncanny ability to find almost ANYTHING “feminine”, appropriate it…and turn it into something so “masculine”, destructive and/or just pure awesome, you can’t believe you never thought of it before! I have no idea what he’s going to grow up to be…but I know it’s going to be spectacular, whatever it is.
I love this! Makes me laugh. And realize that any father who is worried about his little guy playing with “girl toys,” probably doesn’t need to fret too much! Can’t decide if this makes me want to have a boy, or wonder if I’m up for so much energy and intensity! 🙂 Good thing I don’t have to choose (if we’re talking biologically, of course).
Ha! I can tell you, not all boys are like my SJ. In fact, I have a friend with 6 kids (5 boys) who told me that if any of her sons had come out like SJ…she would have declared herself done and shut up shoppe. LOL What can I say – he’s my community service. Everyone loves him, and that’s a good thing, because it’s going to take a village to raise him!