The curse has ended

Looks like we've finally ended the curse of Valentine's Day. For reference, the last three have been marred by 1) year one, sleepless with a screaming baby, driving around aimlessly looking for a place to have a nice dessert that would be tolerant of a screaming baby; 2) year two, Luke's eye surgery; 3) year three, weaning combined with painful hand-foot-mouth disease. Somehow Valentine's Day had become the Day of Misery.

But this year I was happy to be greeted in the morning with a soulful rendition of "Clementine" with guitar accompaniment, of course (picture Luke strumming while sitting in his little chair in front of his new guitar stand/microphone). Later he entertained me with a new song he composed for the guitar: "No hitting/No hitting people/Mommies say no/And they get mad." Verse two: "No pushing/no pushing people..." etc. etc.

Later he completely blew me away with one of his memories. We were reading a book that mentioned termites, and he asked what a termite was, and I said it was a tiny, tiny bug that liked to eat wood. He thought about that for a moment and then asked, "Did a man come to look for termites in our old old beach house?" Whoa. I mean, that was more than six months ago! Who knew that little nugget was still lodged in his brain? So the day turned out pretty well, all things considered, especially given the amount of sugar.

One thing that I increasingly love about Luke is his confidence about asking adults for what he wants. When we went to the library yesterday, Luke and I went looking for his favorite library book -- the Berenstain bears go to the dentist -- but the book was nowhere to be found. "Well, we have to go ask the lady then," he announced, and marched straight up to the reference desk and asked the library lady, "Where's the dentist book?" (Further investigation revealed that both copies were checked out.)

Then at McDonald's for lunch, while I was cleaning up our table, Luke went back over to the counter and started chatting up the cashier about the cookies on display. I didn't hear the conversation but I know it had something to do with how much he liked cookies and how much he might want one. I also knew that he had already had candy that morning, plus cupcakes to come at our V-Day party later, so I ushered him out the door without a cookie. I was actually congratulating myself for having dodged a bullet because I was thinking that at least at a super-corporate place like McDonald's, the employees can't be talked into giving away the food. It was to my huge surprise then, that we were halfway out the parking lot when the McDonald's lady came running after us with a cookie in a bag. "Wait! He said he wanted a cookie!"

Something tells me that if we fast-forward 25 years, we're going to see a guy who is holding on to an America West ticket from Boston to L.A., but he decides that he really would rather fly United, and so he pokes around and asks a few questions, and a few hours later he is flying home first-class on United. Who does that sound like to you?