popcorn construction

A few cute things happened today, of course. First, during one of the five times I tried to convince him to nap, he told me as I lay beside him "Hey, Mommy, I have a good idea." I asked him what it was and he said "let's go ride the Pumpkin Train". This was impressive to me because I have not talked to him about riding the pumpkin train for several weeks, and I mentioned it in passing when I did say something. He remembers everything. It was a good idea, too, and we'll be riding that train on a weekend very soon.

He was happy to reconnect with his toys after a long weekend away from them at the lake, and he commenced to big construction projects with the bulldozers and front end loaders and dump trucks (all imaginary, at first). He got hungry for a snack and asked for goldfish crackers, and I couldn't find any and told him we had left them all at the lake. I offered popcorn instead, and he was delighted with my suggestion. He hid from the noisy air popper while it was going but reappeared when he saw the bowl of popcorn headed to the den. I got a phone call, so I left him with it since I saw that he was happily sitting on the couch and eating it. When I returned to the den, I came in just as he was dumping the entire bowl onto the floor. I might have gotten angry if I hadn't watched what he was doing. He began scooping up the popcorn with all his construction vehicles, dumping it from truck to structure, driving it all around. His Little People were having Dennis-voiced conversations that basically consisted of "We got to move all this popcorn, let's get to work, okay get ready for this load" and things of that nature. It was fascinating and very creative, and I didn't say a word about food on the floor or ants. I played with him until he tired of it, and then I swept and vacuumed the construction zone. It was magical!