hat tricks

I'm not sure there's a more magical age for a child than two and a half. I can't begin to describe the joy and discovery and sheer imagination of my child that delights me daily. I thought things couldn't get any more fun than the singing, which is still so cute that I can hardly stand it, but now we're into playing dress-up and pretend. He dons a hat and adopts a whole new persona. He has a pirate hat and eye patch and bandana that he wears together and walks around calling himself Captain Dennis and insisting everyone say "arrrrgh" to him. Today he started with his Park Ranger Dennis phase, wearing his park ranger hat and brown ranger vest and brown cowboy boots. He also spends a good bit of his time as Firefighter Dennis with hat and axe and walkie talkie and badge and rain boots. And there's Cowboy Dennis, where he dons the cowboy hat and boots and talks about horses. When he's in one of these getups, he's careful to talk about subjects appropriate to his attire, and he pretends to talk in that walkie talkie pretty often about where the fires are and promising to be there soon. It has just occurred to me that I need to video this stuff, and perhaps he'll cooperate, though lately he's been telling me "no, Mommy, no take picture" even though he loves to look at pics of himself.

He doesn't even need a costume, really, just a prop will do. Yesterday before we headed back to Alabama, we stopped at an Alvin's Island to shop for Florida stuff. He found and picked up a plastic megaphone (and I have no idea how he even knew what it was or what it was used for) and held it up to his mouth. While I pushed him around the store in his stroller, he wore a straw hat that he grabbed off a rack along with a pair of Elton-John-esque sunglasses, and he held the megaphone up to his mouth and shouted repeatedly "wadies and genmen, welcome to show". After about six times, I understood that he was saying 'ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show'. I think he learned it from a Fisher Price Little People sketch about the circus. Too funny!