Larry

For the past couple of weeks WC has declared that he is ‘Larry’ and that he ‘likes to kiss boys named CJ.’ WC will make his announcement then chase a giggling, screaming CJ through the house, catch him then wrestle him to the ground in an attempt to kiss his cheek. Larry gets his wish, most of the time. Occasionally, CJ foils his plans and prevents him from kissing him until they both tire of the game.


So far the only point I see in the game is that it takes advantage of blending their favorite activities: running & wrestling each other. WC merely mentions the name Larry and CJ squeals in spastic delight and off they go. The other night as I was drying them off from bath time, WC said “I’m Larry.” And off went two naked, screaming boys through the house. It looked like a scene from Greco Roman wrestling in the living room.

Saturday night we put the boys to bed, and then Jay and I watched some television before retiring. We’d heard the boys bumbling around in their room and Jay had gone back to put them back to bed. Their bedroom door open and shut after that, but we didn’t hear anything so we assumed that the perpetrator had returned to bed on his own accord. Jay and I go into our room to get ready for bed and we just entered when we hear the long exhale of a sleeping child. I look at the bed-empty. We stare at each other a second and creep around to the other side of the bed. And there in the floor is CJ, sound asleep. He’s on his stomach and wedged between the bed frame and the night table. There’s no way to lift him straight up off the floor- he’d hit the bed frame and night table. We were going to have to slide him out then lift him. I go to open their bedroom door and WC sits right up. We asked if he knew his brother was in our room, he shook his head no. But, we knew he wouldn’t be awake unless he knew that his brother wasn’t in the bed below. In CJ’s bed, a giant stuffed dog was placed under the covers, as if were being made to look like CJ sleeping in his bed. We placed a sleeping CJ back into his bed.

The next morning we asked if CJ remembered going into our room and falling asleep in the floor. He did; he said that Larry was after him. Then we were able to get the story out of WC. WC said that he was Larry and CJ jumped out of bed and ran out of the room. WC fearing that he would be in trouble placed the stuffed dog into CJ’s bed hoping we wouldn’t notice the difference. That’s a 7 year old for you- hoping we wouldn’t notice the difference between a stuffed dog and our 3 year old. Then WC laid in bed worrying about where CJ went off to. And CJ had sought refuge from Larry by hiding behind our bed and fell asleep.