9/15/2013

Van spent the morning putting up zombie traps around the house.
Strings tied to every doorknob, bandaids placed in an X on a door, shoes piled up against a door; many things can act as a zombie trap.
I was busy cleaning up, so I was happy he had a distraction that was not too destructive. I carefully stepped over the toilet paper strand he had tied on one end to a barstool and the other end to a kitchen drawer, to preserve the house's new zombie resistant safety regulations.
I was doing laundry and went upstairs to the master bedroom to put away clothes. As I reached out to open the bathroom door, I felt a thick layer of slime.
"Van Karns Angel! Did you cover the bathroom doorknob in Vaseline?!"
Van stopped and looked up from his trap setting downstairs. He thought for a moment and then said, "Oh yeah, that's just to keep zombies out of the bathroom mom."


***

I can tell when Van is playing pretend, when he uses a deep voice.
This morning as I was organizing stuff when he came to me with a dollar I had found in the the laundry, then left on the counter.
"Excuse me mister," he said in his characteristic deep voice, "I would like to buy something from your store. I'm someone else." he added the latter just in case I wasn't clear that we were playing pretend. This is his go-to when he doesn't have time to create an alter-ego.
"Oh I see" I said, "Well I have this monster bowling kit, a truck, and some washcloths in my store today." I said, describing the items directly in front of me. "What are you interested in?"
"Well, I only have one." Van said, holding up the one dollar bill.
"Perfect" I answered, "Each thing here costs 1 dollar, which one do you want?"
"I'll take monster bowling." he decided.
We exchanged money for items all morning. He would disappear out the front door, and come back with dimes and quarters that he would use to buy items from my 'store'. I'm pretty sure he was getting the money from Andy's truck, hope Andy doesn't need to pay for parking any time soon.

***

Back to work tomorrow. I love my work and I love my weekends full of a sweet baby, a wonderful husband and plenty of playing pretend with my imaginative and creative son.
What a fantastic life.