He's already old enough...

This weekend, as we were getting ready to go to Mass, the inevitable fight over wardrobe ensued.  My son probably fights just as much as any fashionista over what to wear.  He's not arguing about dresses or princess costumes, but over which jersey and sports paraphernalia he can wear.  I let him wear sports outfits to pretty much everything, and I even let him wear his astronaut outfit in public (he's cute and it's a functional one-piece).  My husband and I draw the line at Mass.  He doesn't wear exactly what we want him to wear, but we typically give him a choice of 2-3 shirts and 2-3 shorts or pants that we deem appropriate.  This time though, my son screamed "Well, when we were at Mass last week there was a boy who had a nice orange t-shirt with a baseball player on it, if he can wear that, why can't I wear my sports clothes."  Oh no, I thought, it can't be starting already- comparing parenting to others and trying to rationalize why some parents do some things and some parents do others.  Before I launched into, "Well some parents would let their kids run around naked in the streets or run off a cliff."  Fortunately, I caught myself and said, "Well you know how we are going to have a fun day today and go to soccer class and the pool?  Some kids don't get to do that with their parents because every family is different and just as we are able to do some fun things others can't, we have some rules that others don't and that's what makes our family special!"  I'm not sure how well that reasoning worked for him, as he tried to undress himself in multiple ways, but we made it to church and had a good rest of the day.

My son has probably had dreams for a while but just recently started sharing them with us.  I had and still have quite an active dream life that my husband makes fun of (apparently during my pregnancy I woke up in the middle of the night with what I thought was an epiphany of building a "Kitty Superhighway for bad kitties."  I guess this was supposed to be my solution to bad cats was to give them an expressway, not exactly sure of the logic.  Well my son informed us that he had a dream about a shark.  I was concerned that talking about this was going to give him a nightmare, but he told me it was a "fun" dream.  He then told me he reached down to pet the shark (obviously cuing Jaws in my mind) and then when he felt the nose, it felt like Dewey's soft nose (our dog).  Apparently this was really amazing and funny to my son and he keeps talking about it and I'm reluctant to give him a lesson about sharks as if this is going to be a recurring dream, I'd rather have him think it's funny and not scary.  And.... I will plan on letting him watch Jaws before he ever goes swimming in the ocean alone so he doesn't think that petting a shark is a "fun" idea...