spontaneous maturity

We listened to Dennis happily singing to himself and his toys for two hours this morning, sweet wordless tunes expressing his delight at being reunited with his playthings. Many Lego creations were spawned. Daddy and I slept late. Bliss!

Dennis and Gran and I visited Gigi's place at the lake to admire the progress and enjoy a visit with her and her cats. Dennis developed a relationship with his new toybox there, and we all had a great visit. The DirecTV installer came to get her all hooked up, and Dennis dubbed him a superhero! We stayed very late, and once home, Dennis told us he was going to go and get ready for bed. He reappeared in (matching!) pajamas and told us "I know how to brush my teeth, so I'm going to go do that now." A few minutes later he was back with the bag of flossers, asking for help opening it. He stood there in the kitchen with us and flossed his teeth all by himself. His Daddy thanked him for being so responsible, and Dennis picked up a stick of beef jerky from the leftover hiker food and brought it over to present to David. He said "in honor of you thanking me nicely, I'd like to present you with this special gift!". Then he headed to bed, requesting a bible story and some tucking in, which we were happy to do.

On our vacation, Dennis chose a dreamcatcher for himself, something he'd decided to get before we ever left to go on our trip. He had heard that Indians believe they will catch bad dreams before they get to you and he wanted one. He chose a simple, small one at Ely's Mill in Gatlinburg, and we hung it over his bed last night. He told us that it worked, that he could pray for Jesus to keep away bad dreams AND have a dreamcatcher in case some tried to sneak through, and that he had only good dreams last night.