Tommy came home from preschool the other day looking like this (with his friend, Mason):
I put on Tommy’s hat and asked him if I was a cute squid.
“Nooooo! It’s not a squid!”
Of course, I was wrong. So I asked him if I was a cute alien.
“Noooo! It’s not a alien!”
Hmm. I was stumped, so I asked him what it was.
“I don’t know the word,” was his reply.
As I emptied his backpack, I found a spaceship with an alien inside that they had made that day. I asked him if it was a spaceman.
“Nooooo! It’s not a spaceman! I don’t know the word!” Translation: Duh, Mom. If you don’t know what the word is then neither of us are going to know what the word is.
A little while later, Mason’s mom sent me that picture and called them cute “monsters.” Now I was really confused because Tommy totally knows that word. My confusion was saved by the beep of my phone. It was Mason’s mom. Apparently, Mason had suddenly remembered the word.
So I asked Tommy, “Is it a Martian?”
His reply was a celebratory squeal and dance.
Later Tommy told me, “You find Martians on the planet Jupiter.”
Rusty chimed in, “I thought they were from the planet Mer-sure-y.”
And Ricky added his two cents, “No, you take the first 4 letters of the word Martian and that tells you where they are from.”
I’m thinking a solar system lesson might be needed in the near future.