He LIKES it! Hey Mikey!

This evening, Eli got his ice cream all by himself.  No whining.  No shrieking.  He just…got it!  I said to him, “Well look at you!  You got your ice cream all by yourself without any problems!  Good for you, Eli!  Great job!”

He looked at me.  Deadpan.  Blink.  Blink.

“Well, it’s not like I really have a choice, do I.” he stated matter-of-factly. No anger.  No attitude.  Just….it is what it is.

I couldn’t help it.  I laughed out loud!  The kid cracks me up!!

A bit later he had just finished folding towels when he announced he was going to take a shower.  Here’s the thing.  Shower time is awesome time for Eli.  Sometimes, he’ll take two or more showers a day, if we’ll let him.  He enjoys the warmth.  He likes to play “His Game” for a while.  It’s quiet and isolated in there.  I suppose it’s become one of his Safe Zones.  Many times he’ll say, “I’m going to take a shower!” and he’ll go get in all by himself.  He doesn’t actually NEED any help to get his shower started.  But sometimes he insists on Daddy helping him.  He’ll say, “I’m going to take a shower…C’MON DADDY!”  And Ben will follow him in and get things situated for Eli, and then Ben will close the door and Eli begins his special shower time.

So tonight after he succeeded in getting his ice cream all by himself he surprised me by saying, “I’m going to shower…c’mon Daddy!”

I said, “Eli, you don’t need Daddy, do you?  You get yourself into the shower all the time, right?”

Again.  He looked at me.  Deadpan.  Blink.  Blink.

He said, “But I want the routine.”

Oh. Oh!

“Oh, okay,” I nodded and smiled.  “I get it.  You need the routine of Daddy coming to help you? Okay.”

“I like it,” he said before he walked away.  I sat there a moment while his words hung in the air.

Okay…this was huge!  That about as close to admitting an emotion that I have ever heard Eli get!  Usually if I try to get him to admit how he’s FEELING about anything at all, he just shrugs and gives me that noise….”mmmMMMmmmm” that goes perfect with a shrug and indicates “I dunno”.

I just sat there absorbing what had taken place.  He just told me that he wanted something to occur because he LIKED it.  Oh. My. GOSH!!!!!  DID WE JUST HAVE A SMALL BREAKTHROUGH?!

I suppose only time will tell, but when I’m snuggling with him at bed time here in a little bit, I’m going to tell him how much I liked that he told me about wanting something because he likes it.

He LIKES it.

How about that!!