Before we headed to Dothan, Uncle Denny mentioned that there was a space helmet at Granny's that was a favored toy from his childhood (and from mine as well). He wanted Dennis to have it, so Dennis mentioned it first thing this morning. Gran found it, taped up the cracked visor, cleaned it up, and presented it to one delighted little space explorer. His alter ego for our entire drive to Orlando was Space Man or Spaceman Dennis. We heard many conversational gems like "there is no tickling in space, Pop, and no yelling" and also (my favorite) "Space Man needs a Reese's cup" followed by "GIVE SPACE MAN A REESE'S CUP" when I didn't produce the goods quite fast enough for Space Man's liking. Give a kid a vintage Col. McCauley helmet and you never know what you'll get!
Imagine if you will being confined in a car for over 6 hours with a 3 year old. Now imagine my surprise and delight when that very 3 year old was pleasant and quiet and spent over 3 hours entertaining himself with a new $5 Toy Story lap art desk (plastic desk tray with a paper roll with 50 different coloring scenes that he'd color and then roll onto the next one and color it) and a $1 dinosaur sticker book. It may be the best 6 bucks I've spent. Those two activities plus the space helmet play and his nap got him all the way to Orlando without even once needing iPhone or portable DVD player time. He was completely unplugged, just like we were on car trips back in the olden days. He nearly won the game of "cow" that we played just before nightfall. It was unbelievable how great he was for the trip. He is so excited about our upcoming theme park days that when I put him to bed tonight, he told me all about the roller coasters he's planning to ride. He told me "I'm going to ride a dragon roller coaster and it's going to go really fast and when it goes down the hill really fast, I'm going to scream just like this---" and what came out was really more of a combination of a yelp and "eeek", a short, small noise, high in pitch and terribly funny. Gosh he's a fun kid!
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