A 3 year old's mind

So last night when I was putting Aidan to bed, I had another interesting exchange with him.

Prior to bedtime he was particularly naughty.  I won't go into details but let's just say that instead of staying up for another 45 minutes it was straight to bed time.

There were lots of tears and not wanting Daddy to put him to bed, but once we got settled down and I started to read it got interesting.

One of the books I was reading to him was based off of The Incredibles movie which is one that we have not seen.  Bob, the Dad, at one point blew off someone named Buddy.  Years later Buddy turned into an evil genius named Syndrome and tried to exact his revenge against Bob and his family.

Bob

Buddy

Syndrome

Aidan repeated to me that Buddy was a child when the initial incident happened and that now that he had "grown up" he turned into a "bad guy".

• He asked me if "Buddy had been bad to his Mommy and Daddy".
• I said "yes".
• He then asked me if "Buddy had been bad to his doggie too".
• I said "yes"
• He immediately projected Buddy onto himself and his evening's actions.
• He then told me that he didn't want to be like Buddy and that he wanted to grow up to be a good superhero.  (remember, we're in this massive Batman/Spiderman phase right now)
• I told him that "that is a great idea" and that "we want you to grow up and be a good superhero too"

He then let me finish the book.

It's good to see that he's recognizing his bad behaviors and then wants to make amends for what he's done.

Who knows, maybe someday  WILL be a good superhero.  We can only allow him to keep living his dreams.

POW! BAM! @%&# ZONK!

Well, the joys of Aidan turning three has involved his intense desire to live, breathe and act as Batman.

We really had no idea where this came from other than at school where the other little boys may have gotten into the superhero genre a bit earlier thanks to older brothers.  In fact, Aidan's buddy/nemesis at school is almost always wearing Spiderman clothes and the amount of fake web shooting out of our wrists at home has been at an all-time high for the last 3-4 months.  (This of course took me instantly back to 4th grade at Fairview School and playing with Kyle Bernsten and Stan-can't remember his last name on the playground doing the same exact thing....hmm, the Circle of Life)

But a Batman Cave was top of the list for Aidan when telling Santa what he wanted for this year and lo' and behold, he was just good enough for Ol' St. Nick to come through.

But this has really been a nice throwback for me as not only do we DVR The Batman cartoon on Boomerang (Cartoon Network) which is an updated flashy, but not as dark as Batman Beyond, but we also DVR the original Batman TV series from the 60's.

I remember always making time to catch Batman on either WGN or WFLD when I got home from school.  Now I'm making time for when Aidan gets home from school.  It still amazes me at the big named talent that they would get to play villains on that show given it's campy format.  I usually take a look at what's going to play for the week and then choose which sets of 2 (remember, most of them were always 2 half-hour episodes with the cliff-hanger in between) we're going to record.

I happened to see that early next week they are going to run the ones with Chandell (Liberace) who plays a concert pianist who tries to woo Aunt Harriet to get her fortune.

This likely will not be one for Aidan, it'll move too slow and he won't get it but since there were only 2 episodes, it'll be a great one for me.

At this point, Aidan mostly likes the loud/obnoxious villains who are also more of the "major" ones like Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman.  He also has recently become aware of Mr. Freeze but mostly because of the cartoon version we see.  Somehow these capture his attention more than the cerebral villains like Bookworm, Mad Hatter, King Tut and Egghead.

In a weird way, I'm wondering how Aidan's countless Sheriff Woody characters are dealing with the arrival of several Batmans?

Lastly, Aidan does a bit of association with lists or items I think mostly for memory but also to prove to us he can remember things.  For example, quite some time ago he got interested in what our favorite colors are and he was very proud that he could always remember each of our colors. 

For Batman, he's assigned each of us one of the Batman characters for role play.  He, of course, is Batman (there was even discussion tonight, 10 months in advance, that he'd be Batman for Halloween next year).  I am the youthful ward/boy wonder Robin, Mary Kay is the Catwoman, my Dad is Joker and my Mom is Penguin.  Quite the crew the lot of us.

Until my next post, stayed tuned, same bat-time, same bat-channel......