Hey there...

Zane’s been really blossoming in his speaking abilities and comprehension these days. There’s some rather strange elements of it as well. We were at the park last week and an older lady came by with her dog. She was kind of odd in that she made a point to have Zane say hi to her dog, which he eventually did. She asked if he had a dog and he mentioned Raz, but then he launched into a big story about Zeke and how Zeke DIED and everyone was very sad! She tried to talk about her dead dog, but by then he was back to playing in the rocks. Last night my friend Brian called and Zane said he wanted to talk to him. Sure enough, he launched into a full back and forth conversation with Brian which, for some reason, ended with him discussing Zeke dying.

I think this all started when Zane was telling us in the car one day that he wanted Raz to die and we mentioned that this might be sad, like when Zeke died. It seemed to stew for a while and has now become a part of his life narrative.

Yesterday I got a call from him, saying that I was getting upset at mommy. Oh? Yes, daddy was upset because mommy wasn’t letting Zane go outside and pee in the woods. Then last night he decided at the last minute that he didn’t want to sleep, but wanted to eat ice cream instead. I’d got him calmed down and, what I thought was close enough to sleep, to get up and leave his room. This launched him into a full-on, 10-15 minute crying spree with “i want ice cream cone i want ice cream cone i want ice cream cone” repeated over and over through tears the whole time. The only way that I eventually snapped him out of it was to carry him outside to look at the Moon. A couple minutes later he was back in bed, calm again. As he was starting to drift off to sleep he said,

“Daddy?”
Yes
“I really like you a lot …”
“but”
…
“I think mommy is worried for you.”

I didn’t get what it was that mommy was worried about or if it was just another element of his puzzling things together and relationships between everyone, like how I was somehow upset this morning because of something mommy wouldn’t let him do.