The Blue-Eyed Wonder Boy

Marshall is almost five years old, and he just amazes me. He has become extremely inquisitive about all kinds of things and his observations about where things are and how things work are astonishing sometimes. Every Monday, I keep him all day and we usually stay at his house or run errands, or go someplace for fun. Today, he helped me wash my car since I drove to the beach this past weekend. I decided it would be fun to go to a "do-it-yourself" car wash, so he could really help. For some reason, he always likes to "help" do everything. He got pretty good with the car wash nozzle, although it almost knocked him off his feet when he pushed the nozzle for the high-powered rinse! He loved putting the dollars in the coin machine and easily kept track of how many quarters we had. His favorite phrase is "I can do it all by myself!" He helped vacuum, throw away trash, dry off the car, clean the floor mats, and became friends with the maintainance man hosing off the driveways. When I was putting the floor mat in on the driver's side, all of a sudden, Marshall's head appeared, and he began asking, "Mimi, where is the brake? Where is the gas pedal? How do you make the car go backwards? What is this for?" He began repeating everything I told him. It almost sounded like he was getting ready to take my car and go on a trip!

When we got back to his house, he wanted to play with his new hermit crab, Pitcher, and he and I built a Lincoln Log cabin for him. When I stepped out of the room, however, Marshall put the hermit crab on the back of a truck, and then got busy doing something else. The crab took this as his chance of a lifetime, and took off! Who knew they could move so fast? When I came back in the room, I said, "Where is Pitcher?" Marshall said, "I don't know." Well, we looked and looked for him in the kitchen, where we last saw him, and he was not to be found! I said, "We need a flashlight." Marshall said, "I know where there are some flashlights, Mom keeps them in a tub in the utility room." (Julie is very big on organizing things in Rubbermaid boxes and tubs.) Sure enough, we went in there, and Marshall knew just which tub, out of about 20, had the flashlights! After searching high and low for the crab luckily, about three hours later, we found him walking across the kitchen floor like he was out for a stroll!

Later in the day, we needed a vase for a flower he picked in the back yard. I began looking for a little glass to put it in, and he said, "I know where Mom keeps the vases," and he took me to the cabinet that was full of vases. He always knows where things are when I need them.

When we were in Port Aransas this weekend, it got late, and instead of going out to dinner (we were very sandy and tired), we decided to go to the grocery store and just buy a frozen pizza---but Julie and I looked at each other and said, "Did our cabin have an oven?" Neither of us could remember anything but a microwave being in there---we had spent all of about ten minutes there, just to change clothes and unpack the car. (Macy was only interested in how cute her swimsuit and cover-up looked when she was dressing!) Marshall said, "YES, it had an oven!!" We questioned him and he sounded so sure, so we bought the pizza. We got back to the cabin, and happily, there was a stove to cook our pizza in! He said, "I told you there was an oven!!"

His vocabulary increases every day also. Today, he used the word, "apparently" several times. He said, "The hermit crab is apparently in a dark damp place, because that is what they like to do." He is reading small words and can tell you what letter any word starts with. His coloring and writing are not very good yet, but he loves cutting paper and putting together pretty hard jigsaw puzzles. Today, he was playing with a bucket of little cars, about a hundred of them, and he was sorting them into catagories of "Matchbox Cars," "Hot-Wheels," "John Deere things," motorcycles, etc.

I cannot believe how fast the past five years have gone by. Only yesterday, he was a little blue-eyed baby, who loved to snuggle and be rocked to sleep. In a few months, he will be in kindergarten---and then---what will I do on Mondays?