kiwords

Raphael is heartlessly intending to turn five in about a month and a half. I can’t bear it. He is right now my very favorite age, all preschool imagination and self-importance. But soon he’ll cross that line into school aged, and although I’ll still adore him, I will miss interactions such as this:

This morning Raphael took roughly a million sheets of paper out of the printer and cut them up into a snow bank of itty bitty paper bits. He was forming small diamonds of paper that could be folded in half and held between his lips to form a beak. He made great big old bird beaks (handed to me with a smile) and little tiny baby bird beaks. All morning long he randomly appeared at my elbow, paper beak rapidly softening in his mouth, and cheeped happily.

“Oh, is this my baby bird?” I asked. He nodded hard and cheeped louder. “Do you want some yummy worms?” Big nod. I pretended to drop worms in his beak, and he snapped them up.

“Do you know what some Mom birds do for their babies?” I asked. “They go flying around to find yummy bugs and worms and they eat them. Then they go back to their nest and their babies open their beaks,” Raphael tipped his head back and held his lips open, so the beak would gape, “right, like that. And the mama bird puts her beak in the baby beak and throws up the yummy food in their mouths.” I had sort of hoped to induce that’s so gross laughter, the most sincere kind, but he just nodded thoughtfully and snatched the beak out of his mouth so he could speak.

“Mom? Mom? You know those dinosaurs that fly? With all the teeth and wings that look like bats, only –“ he waved his arms to demonstrate LARGENESS, “– only BIGGER? They do bring yiddle* dinosaurs and throw them up for their babies to eat.” I started to say something, but he hastily added, “But of course not anymore, because they are all extinct. Can I have some cake?”

And he stuck the beak back in his mouth and hopped away.

*yiddle is one of Raphael’s few remaining mispronounced words. Whenever Tre or Max notice that he still says yiddle instead of little, they reminisce about the time he “ate a yiddle bug.” The first time he says “little” my heart will break.