When we take long rides in the car (to a 3 year old, even 30 minutes is long), Ethan gets to watch movies in the car. As you can imagine, we've watched many, many cartoon movies over the past year. So when we went to Illinois a few weeks ago, I made sure we had a couple of "real" movies as well and when we couldn't stand the sound of cartoon characters anymore (and Ethan went to sleep), I put Tranformers in. We've had it for a while but I'd only seen it once until that weekend.
Ethan woke up when the "action" was in full swing and was instantly hooked. The cars talked and moved and turned into people. This was awesome. E: "Who's that one, Mama?" M: "Bumblebee." E: "It's Bumblebee? He's cool. Oh, who's that one?" M: "Optimus Prime." E: "Optimus Pwime? He's a cool twuck. I wike him.".....and so it went until the movie ended at which time he instantly said, "can we watch Twansfoahmahs again?" Oddly, I'm not yet sick of the movie but then it's longer than the cartoon movies so he can't watch it as many times in one sitting.
Since then, every yellow car we've seen has been "Bumblebee" to the point that even Alex is now pointing them out and saying "OH! Buh buh!" Yellow trucks are sometimes referred to as "Rachet" (the medical officer who was a yellow/red emergency vehicle) if Ethan can remember Rachet exists; otherwise, they are all Bumblebee. After two weeks of this, last week when Ethan and I were shopping for Steve's father's day present (a weedeater), Ethan got a present, too. He finally got his own Bumblebee Transformer. He took it to bed the first night and then everywhere he went for the next 4 days - including to Aunt Megan's house for Father's Day. Unfortunately, he left Bumblebee there and we didn't realize this until we were almost home so no chance to go back for it.
Ethan's been a little mopey this week and then it came out last night. He was flipping through the brochure of Transformers that came with his car last night and then he looked at me with tears gleaming in his eyes and said, "Mama, I miss Bumblebee." He wasn't even playing me for the toy - he had been talking to Bumblebee like an imaginary friend last week and then he was just gone and he really, really missed his buddy. Yes, it broke my heart.
So, today after work, I went to Walmart and got a new Bumblebee - not the same one we had before because the Walmart by my work didn't have that one. This one was a little different (read: more difficult to transform) and came with another Transformer - a Decepticon - that was impossible to transform. I finally got Bumblebee from robot to car form and then we ate dinner. Following dinner, Steve tried for 20 minutes to transform the Decepticon into a vehicle while I tried to make Bumblebee back into the Robot as Ethan now wanted. Then, both of us unsuccessful, we traded and 5 minutes later, we'd both managed to find the pieces that weren't quite attached correctly (yeah, we totally broke them). If 2 adults can't work them, no way the boys could. So we started putting them back in the box to take them back to Walmart.
Ethan wigged out - he did NOT want to take them back. He didn't care that Bumblebee was broken - he wanted THAT Bumblebee - NOT another one - NOT the one he had last week that looked just the same but had a shooter (plastic missile) that he missed on this one - he didn't CARE that it didn't have the shooter anymore - no no no.....I told him he could go with me and pick out his own Bumblebee but we were not keeping the broken one. Steve told him these were too hard to do, they wouldn't transform like they were supposed to and they kept breaking apart. He totally didn't care - he just wanted that one. But then I distracted him with ice cream and he calmed down enough to get a shirt on and shoes and head to Walmart with me. Excellent idea because our Walmart did still have the Bumblebee we had originally purchased and we bought that one and another Transformer ("Mudflap" for Alex of course) and a bag of ice all for less than the cost of the first two I'd bought after work. The best part is, we can actually transform these ourselves.
Ethan was so excited - Bumblebee went upstairs with him to bed tonight as did Mudflap for Alex. The cars went in there room and they both took a bath. Neither of them were thrilled with the idea of leaving the cars on the shelf until morning. Alex asked repeatedly for his but finally relented and laid down to sleep. Ethan agreed to stay in bed and go to sleep and he could play with it in the morning....or so he said. For the next hour, we kept hearing Ethan talking quietly to himself. I called upstairs several times for him to go to sleep (Alex was clearly asleep as we didn't hear him at all) and Ethan replied each time "ok."
Finally, I called upstairs and told Ethan to come down and bring the transformers with him. He said "ok" and came downstairs saying "what?" (like "what did I do - I didn't do anything") with a huge grin. Steve was basically laughing quietly at the expression so this was totally up to me. I had him bring me the cars and told him to back to bed and stop playing. He agreed and up the stairs he went.
Was that the end? Oh, no. We still heard him talking. I called him back to the steps and asked him what he was doing. He said nothing. I asked who he was talking to. He said no one. I asked what he was talking about - he said, "I'm dust talking about myselth." Me: "you're talking about yourself?" E: "Uh-huh. ..." the ... here refers to something he said which was completely indecipherable. I asked Steve what language that was - Steve was now laughing hysterically but quietly so Ethan wouldn't notice and he responded with a shrug. I asked Ethan what he'd said and he said the same indecipherable thing...3 more times. Steve was just as clueless as I was and Ethan was now on to his laughter. I asked Ethan to come downstairs so I could read his lips as he said it. He chose not to and just said it again so I told him to look right at me and he said it again and I guessed at what he said and asked "I'm just too logical?" He said yes, that's what he'd said. The little smartie was telling me I was just being too logical in asking him who he was talking to etc - apparently it was no one and I should just butt out. Talk about a rotten child. I explained again (while trying not to laugh) that he was supposed to be going to sleep and he couldn't do that if he was playing or talking to or about himself. He agreed with me and went upstairs. He has now talked his daddy into letting him sleep in my bed which means I'm sleeping downstairs tonight.
I have no idea how I bought 3 separate Bumblebee toys in the course of a week and yet I get to sleep downstairs on the couch but at least it's cooler downstairs than it is upstairs. How's that for being "too logical"?
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