busy bugger

I got very angry at Dennis this morning because he deleted around 75 photos and videos off the phone before I got it away from him. Cute videos, like the one of Tabasco howling at the toy fire truck, the one of the song he made up for me when I was sick, and the ones of him saying the Lord's Prayer and his goodnight prayer. I'm sure they're in the backup file on the computer, but I don't know to access them. He got his feelings hurt that I was angry, and we both had a good cry. He was very articulate when he explained how he was feeling. I was impressed. Yesterday he told David "Daddy, you broke my heart", which has been his go-to comment as if late when we don't allow him to do something he wants to do. Today he just said that he was sorry he upset me and that my yelling at him made his ears sad, and he was sad that I was sad. It was just a sad time, but we moved on.

I tried some cleanout today, bur Dennis kept dancing by and swiping things. Our trash is his treasure. He found an old tennis racket from the Not Trash pile and said "oh, wow, I've always wanted one of these!" and urged me to play tennis with him. I tossed Tabasco's tennis ball to him a few times and he lobbed it back, and then he found a plastic paintball gun (mostly stripped), and begged me to "play POW" with him. I took a bag of trash out, and returned to the house to find that he'd locked me out, so I rang the doorbell with what I hoped was an authoritative push of the button. He came to the door saying "oh, here comes a customer to my gun store" and then unlocked it for me. He was draped in faux artillery, saying "hello, ma'am, would you like to buy a gun today? I have some very nice guns for sale". It's hard to say no to a miniature arms dealer in a t-shirt and underpants, so I went through with the transaction (the old wooden play rifle was the only one I could afford) and we "powed" each other for a while before settling in on the couch and new ottoman for a snuggle and a book.

Sorry I don't have the usual low-res iPhone photo to add to the post, but my heart just wasn't in taking another photo for him to delete, another tiny loss to grieve. I hate losing physical evidence of treasured memories because I feel I need those little movies to remind me of how he was at this age when I wonder in the future. I'd emailed many of them, and I can probably find them in my outbox, so let me get out if this and get into that so I can get over it!