My Deep Thinker (and he seems to feel deeply, too)

Grandpa Jan made an astute observation about Eli around his second birthday. He said that he could tell from the pictures that I had been emailing for some time that Eli was a deep thinker. He said that he could tell from his expression that Eli really studied things. It's very true. You can tell from the pictures of Disney World that he wears a serious expression on his face the first time he's on a ride. First, he tries to figure them out. Eventually, once comfortable, he will smile or laugh, but not initially. He seems to have a long attention span too, which may be due in part to the fact that he thinks deeply. Also, possibly related, -- he seems to have quite a memory. For instance, when I talked to him about going to the Lake House this time, he remembered his Pooh bed, his train, his Bob the Builder tape, and even how we played at the Boat House. We hadn't been there in about three months and all of those things had only been part of one of our visits. He'll often remember details that I don't. It's pretty crazy.

Not only does he think deeply, he seems to feel deeply, as well. About six months ago discipline was really easy. All we had to say was that whatever he was doing made Mommy or Daddy sad, he would stop it immediately and burst out crying. Then he would say through his tears, "Mommy (or Daddy) happy now?" He doesn't cry about it anymore, but it's still a fairly effective tactic.

Lately, how deeply he feels has shown itself most obviously through how he listens to books. This started about six months ago, too. We got some long Disney books from the thrift store to get him excited about Disney World, and while they were too long to read word for word, we would paraphrase based on our memories of the stories and the pictures. So, I was reading Dumbo and paraphrasing, and I got to a page where Dumbo's mom was locked up and crying(she got in trouble for protecting Dumbo from some bullies) and I said something about how sad Dumbo's Mommy was. He immediately stuck out his bottom lip in a sad little pout and started crying. For a long time we had to avoid the Dumbo book.

Now he really listens to stories, and often will repeat phrases back to me or ask me questions about the book, so now the words in the book have the opportunity to upset him too. Since the Dumbo incident this has happened four times that I can recall. The first time, it happened with "Are You My Mother?" -- the Snort terrified him, he wore this wide eyed expression for the rest of the book, then kept nervously glancing back at the book once I had gone on to reading something else. I actually had to hide the book so that I could continue reading.

The other night it happened at the bookstore while we were there with Aunt Seana. I read the book about the little boy who fed his fish too much and it wouldn't stop growing. I could tell as I continued to read that something was worrying him. By the time I finished the book he was hiding his eyes, and saying that he wanted to go home. I'm still not sure exactly what bothered him, but eventually he agreed to the fact that the big fish scared him.

Then, there's a Winnie the Pooh Halloween book that we got from the library. There are a few scary pages, and Eli wanted me to read it repeatedly, but he would listen mainly from across the room. Finally, it happened one more time today, with the "Wee Little Woman", a book that we checked out today from the library. In the story the woman yells at her cat (maybe I was too good in my impersonation), "Scat, Cat!" and the little cat is scared and runs out of her house. He got that same wide-eyed expression and I told him that we could put the book away, he seemed relieved. It's so interesting and hard to predict the funny ways that things will hit him.

*Unrelated Cute Quote: The other day while I was getting him out of the car, he wanted to help unbuckle himself and he was taking his time about it. I started to playfully gnaw on his leg. He said, "Oh, Mommy, now Ewi's all wet. Ewi's not wearing his swim suit!"