Boys come with NOISE!

Connor is Mike's little guy and our 2nd grandchild.

Hand a 3-year-old boy a toy truck and he'll immediately start brrrr-ing his lips together while moving that toy truck around. In fact, when my boys were young, they didn't even need a toy truck. They could take a shoe or wood block or a pair of my eyeglasses and run them across the floor - all the while making that brrr-ing sound. (It took years before I realized it wasn’t my vision but the scratched glasses!).

And it’s not just trucks – it’s airplanes, dinosaurs, any kind of Star Wars or Ninja activity, and guns! OMG! - Ask a boy to hold out his hand and make a shooting sound - and he'll immediately ask you, "What caliber?" Two hours later, he will still be shooting his finger at every object within sight. Occasionally, he'll pause to throw out a Dirty Harry phrase, like, "Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya' punk?" and KAAPOOHA! His arm will suddenly go skyward with "believable" recoil. Then, without warning, he might switch to 2-handed machine-gun mode and shoot Rambo-style - right from the hip. The truly gifted will sometimes even hoist an imaginary bazooka up onto his shoulder and will actually close one eye to look through his imaginary sights before pulling the imaginary trigger. You ought to hear that sound. It's a beautiful thing!

Connor comes with NOISE! And questions . . . ‘You wanna see something?’, ‘Can I tell you something?’, ‘Hey, guess what?’, ‘You wanna know something?’ When you finally give him the attention, there comes a long pause as he tries to figure out something to make your time worthwhile! Then he always has the answer and solution to tell you. Even tho he’s only in kindergarten, he has a cell phone with his favorite pictures, music from the 80’s (I wondered who programmed that, Dad?), and numbers to family and friends. He actually told me the other day that I needed to get a cell phone so that he could text me. ‘Fat chance of that!’ Anyone that knows me, knows I like anonymity.

When we were with him at Christmas, he flexed one arm and said – ‘This is REASON’; then he flexed the other one and said ‘This is persuasion‘. The kid literally cracks me up! While living down in Hurricane for the past year he has climbed mountains with his Dad & Mom, ridden four-wheelers, gone boating, flown his Dad’s traction kites, and lost 3 teeth; he’s gone to Vegas more in the last year than I have in 10; learned to swim; become accomplished at Wii and his Playstation games; whooshed his way down the ‘Zip line’; mastered his bike (without training wheels) in just two days; has attended -not one but two- kindergartens this year and is well ahead of kids in both of his classes – not just scholastically, but actually a whole HEAD!! Although he is only going to be 6, he’s more the size of an 8 year old! He always wants to know why his Granpa Woody tells him that he ‘thinks he’s DUTCH’ – his comeback is, ‘No I’m Connor!’ He has a collection of Star Wars light sabers (7 at last counting); he enjoys playing with the old Star Wars action figures that his Dad played with so many years ago; and games on his Playstation - He’s a bundle of energy and intense noise-making while jumping up and down in front of the TV and bouncing off the furniture like a ‘super ball’! The BOY is definitely ALL BOY! And we love every minute of him and his NOISE!

Happy 6th Birthday, Connor!