remember this moment

every 1-2 months pete and i like to take the boys one-on-one for a date night.

tonight was my privilege to take sam.

he wanted his date to be a trip to ikea for dinner and an easel.

that may seem random,

but sam is a kid who loves to paint.

every night at our ritual talking about things he always includes that he would like to paint a picture the next day.

he has been dying for an easel.

he wants to paint a picture of the earth,

and a large piece of paper on a stand was just what he was dreaming of.

i was excited to assist him with this dream.

what happened from here i hope to always freeze in my memory.

i want to not forget a thing about sam in this moment in time...

how he loves rhyming, it started with just made up words, but now his rhymes make sense,

he rhymed to whole way to ikea.

his originals are... don't tell your dad or he will be mad, anything that rhymes with poo or pee.

he passes his time in the car by counting signs or identifying letters on street signs or making contraptions out of rubber bands and sticks or drawing in a notebook that he always has with him so he won't get car sick,

he still loves to hold my hand wherever we go,

he is such a good eater,

and i love watching when he is given the choice to have whatever he wants.

tonight it was chicken strips, french fries, mashed potatoes & gravy, 2 chocolate milks, & a chocolate bar for dessert.

he's like a little grown-up talking about how there weren't many people there or about how they must all be downstairs or about how delicious the gravy was or about how wonderful the date was going.

he is very task oriented,

he spends his time focusing on the task without being easily distracted,

like loading the easel into the cart before we could do anything else.

then he was free to crawl through the display tunnels and play at the game kiosks.

i want to freeze in my brain his blond, long, textured hair,

his serious blue eyes,

how tall he is getting and how he loves to always measure how much more he has to grow to be as tall as me. (he comes to the top of my chest already!)

i also want to freeze what happened once we got home.

the easel got set up immediately,

and he went straight to work.

he created his first masterpiece of the solar system,

the earth with mexico, california, and hollywood all included.

as well as outer space, the stars, the sun, and pluto, saturn, mars, and neptune.

he wants to send it to a museum.

he wants to roll it up, put it in a tube, and mail it.

i hope it gets displayed.

then we will always remember this day and how it all began.