Surprise!

We are big on surprises at our house. It started out as a way to maintain our sanity. I believe The Boy was just two years old. A few months in advance, we purchased tickets to see The Wiggles live in concert. In our excitement, and ignorance, we told The Boy about what awaited him. He was ecstatic! He then proceeded to ask us each and every day, "Is today the day we go see The Wiggles?" At first it was very cute, his hopefulness renewed each morning. But, this went on for sixty days minimum!

After that event was over, we vowed to never share knowledge of such events until The Boy had a better concept of time. On one occasion, we were half way to Disneyland before he asked, "Where are we going?" It was great! No relentless questioning. He was wonderfully surprised and we were at the park having a great time merely hours later.

Back to present day, The Boy can tell and understand time now, but he enjoys surprises so much that we have continued the trend. However, it is getting more difficult as he becomes increasingly astute. Two days ago, we were fortunate enough to catch him completely off-guard.

If you have school-aged children, you may be familiar with Pokemon. The Boy is completely enthralled with it at the moment. So, when I found an adorable plush Pachirisu online, I immediately e-mailed the link to The Wife and she ordered it. When we picked up The Boy from Grandma's house, Pachirisu was sitting in his car seat. He was overjoyed! I don't think he has broken physical contact with it since.

Something The Boy occasionally does is assign a personality to a toy and then have a conversation with said toy. He speaks in his normal voice for himself and speaks in a higher-pitched voice for the toy. And the entire dialogue plays out as a singular, run-on sentence. This exercise in imagination has been especially employed with Pachirisu.

"You're coming home with me. Great! Can I play with your toys? Yes. I'm going to take you to school. Yay!"

I've discovered The Boy in various other role-play settings, such as Pachirisu sitting on the floor with The Boy standing over his toy and directing it to "use Discharge!" And, when I ask, "What are you doing, bud?" he replies as if it is completely obvious, "I'm making him stronger. He's brand new so he's only at level one."

Now, that I've thoroughly explained this would-be simple tale, the zenith of the story is ... what a spectacular feeling to give your child such a small gift and see it bring them such a large amount of happiness. This is easily the best ten dollars we have ever spent.