Thursday 4 June 2009

Blue Dad's Birthday and Other Imaginations

Since Declan could speak he has had a Blue Dad. His Blue Dad lives in a Blue House, sometimes in Armidale and sometimes just far away.

I'm not sure what started the whole Blue Dad's Birthday scenario on April 19th - maybe the excitement of two brothers' upcoming birthdays with the eager countdown to the consecutive days in May.

But this is how it went. Declan's "other" dad, his Blue Dad, was having a birthday party. Declan was preparing himself to go to the party. His real Dad entered into the story and shared the excitement (a little too heartily, perhaps), asking questions and suggesting things to pack in his special bag on a stick. This concreted the occasion as real and important.

I had tried to stand off a bit and let Declan go with his imagination, alone. He bugged me a bit, asking me if I could take him to his other dad's place. I suggested that we could draw a map with pictures of the car, train and plane that I was told would be needed to get there. This didn't satisfy Declan at all.

Try as we might to ignore, or at least quell, Declan's enthusiasm for the birthday party, it was not going to settle down and go away. Eventually, DH decided to take Declan on a short drive in the hope that it would satisfy Declan's strong desire to get going.

After a quick trip around the block Declan stomped inside with a dark look on his face.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Dad was just FAKING it!" came the knowing reply.
He was not happy, Jan.

Declan really thought that he would be going in the car to the train and in the train to the plane. I'm not really sure where, though. I whipped out my mobile phone and captured the moment. Not a fabulous photo but it holds the memory.

Today I was inspired by a Tuesday Tutorial on Ali Edwards' blog. The tute was by Jennifer McGuire. I liked the simple nature of the layouts and decided to sneak into my art room and finally scrap the photo of Declan that has been sitting on the printer for the last few days.


Done.

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