Almost the future Hemingway

A few days ago, the kids and I were killing time until Jeff got home. As usual. The hours of 3pm to 5pm are not 60 minutes long like the rest of the day. They are somehow magically stretched into 300 minutes each.

Now that Michael is crawling and pulling up and generally just getting into trouble, we can't just plop him down and wander through the house without him (like in an adventure game, or, God forbid, Neighbor). So I've been trying to do things that require us to stay in one room. Like, Lord help me, Castle. Ugh. That G-damn castle. Oh, wait, officially it is a wonderful gift that is enhancing and developing my daughter's imagination. Un-officially it is the torture device that creates whining, "Pay Cast-ell. Mommy, you be pin-cess. A-ew, you be king."

I digress. A few days ago, I managed to distract Lily from said castle with crayons and an Elmo coloring book. So Andrew immediately starts trying to take her crayons and color with her...a big no-no to a two year old and instant scream fest. I grabbed a handful of computer paper and asked Andrew if he wanted to make a story book with me. He lept at the idea and we folded the paper and began.

He had a definite idea for a story. I kept trying to suggest plot points, but he was really inspired. The story went like this:

Title: Mommy and Andrew's Story
pg1:Once upon a time there was a bean stalk.
pg2: There were people living on the bean stalk.
pg3: There was a princess, 2 wizards, and a giant.
pg4: The princess wanted the giant to go away.
pg5: She wanted her royal nap, but it was too loud!
pg6: The wizards raced to the giant. They made a magic spell.
pg7: It put bubbles in the air.
pg8: The giant blew the bubbles back to the wizards.
pg9: The bubbles hit the wizards and made them giants!
pg10: They picked up the princess and did a spell.
pg11: Now she was a giant!
pg12: She felt better than ever before.

We did illustrations for each page after writing down the story. Andrew wanted such details for the pictures, "Make the princess mad, Mom, she's really mad about not sleeping."

I am just about wetting myself with pride at this point. This was a REAL story, with a beginning, middle, and end. With plot points and resolution. My child is a future Pulitzer Prize winning author!

And then we went to draw the bubbles. I started to color them in and Andrew said, "No, Mom, they aren't colorful in the show."

What?!?

Yes, turns out that this is the storyline for a Backyardigans episode. Which explained a lot. And made that Pulitzer Prize kind of back shelved for the moment.

But I'm still a proud mommy. Because summarizing a tv show into a 12 page book is a pretty amazing skill for a 5 year old. My 5th graders couldn't summarize a single chapter in a book. And this kid could tell you what each of his Magic Tree House books was about...even though we read some of them months and months ago. And apparently he is also digesting his tv shows. And Backyardigans isn't even one we watch a lot. So, no Hemingway. But I'm still beaming. :)