Three-year-old of a Different Sort

Today has been a different day for us here in the Lee house. I'm not sure what changed, but Daniel is being different today. It all started when I came downstairs to get coffee at 6:30 am, and Daniel politely insisted that he needed oatmeal right then. I agreed, but then had to leave him to wait for it to cool off to eat to deliver coffee to Matt. Several minutes later Daniel came upstairs to announce that he was all done with his oatmeal. There was not a speck on him, so I assumed that all was fine. He returned downstairs alone which is pretty unusual for him. He always wants company. Well, he came back upstairs with a face and hand full of chocolate cupcake crumbs. I guess he was still hungry and was fed up with looking at the container of cupcakes that were still around since Saturday, so he decided to do something about it.

The next unusual happening was that he chose to have baby carrots for his morning snack and also insisted on carrying the rest of the bag around in his pocket from 10 am until he finished off the last few at 12:30 pm. What a goose! I guess I can't complain about having a kid that eats a bunch of carrots.

So while Daniel was upstairs 'napping,' he was very quiet for 35 minutes or so, and then I started hearing him go back and forth between his room and the bathroom and the water was occasionally running in the bathroom.  I usually force him to come downstairs before I'll go up and chat with him, but today I decided to go up and give it a look. Well, the water was from a toy octapus that squirts water. Ok, no big deal, but then I went in his room and the chair was directly underneath the ceiling fan, suspicious to say the least.

Next Daniel announces in a voice as matter of face and serious as he has ever been, "Mom, I'm doing an experiment." Me, "really?" Daniel, "Yes, I am going to put the towels up there (gestures to the fan) and the I'm going to do this (puts book over his head)." I can only assume that the book was protection from the falling objects.

After this announcement he asks me if I can get the fan pull out of the glass shade for the bulbs where it was caught so he can continue his experiment. At ths point, I removed the fan pull, shook my head, made some mild direction of the "fan pulls are for grownups" sort and left. I was unable to come up with more specific or strong correction because my mind was flooded with visions of my sister and I putting things on the fan blades in our room and seeing what happened when we turned the fan on. This event happened on several occasions. What goes around comes around I guess. Hopefully he will move on to the next experiment soon.

This kid has a mind for science. Yesterday he was asking me for a magnifying glass so that he could see which feet were on the Cootie in the picture on the box.

It is wonderful to see him trying to figure out his world and coming up with the words to describe what he wants/sees/thinks. Finding the words and patience to go step by step is extremly furstrating for Daniel which makes it frusterating for us, too. I love these moments when I get a glimpse of what is going on inside his head.