It�s already ten o�clock, and I�m only just now sitting down to write. Today has been absolutely nuts. We were up half the night last night as a series of thunderstorms rolled through. AJ has never been afraid of thunderstorms before, but he�s been reading a book lately where a little boy is terrified of thunder and lightning. Consequently, it has now occurred to him that he is supposed to be frightened. And I spent most of the night escorting AJ back to his bed over and over again.

This did not leave either of us in the best frame of mind for playgroup today, nor was the situation aided by the uncooperative weather, which refused to decide whether it was sunny or raining. To be on the safe side, we cancelled plans to meet at a playground and instead, the horde of little boys (and one baby girl) converged on our house. They took no prisoners. The rapidity and large extent of the destruction was impressive. �Look, AJ�s mom,� AJ�s friend Z. proclaimed proudly, �we made a big mess!� I looked over the wreckage of AJ�s room and had to agree. They had quite literally turned out every box and bag of toys, unearthing in the process some I didn�t even know we had. If there was anything that had to be put together, they dismantled it (and vice versa). I�ve never seen anyone work so fast.

But they had fun. AJ got a little frustrated when they went to play outside. He thinks he�s the fastest boy on the planet. And he is quite fast, actually. But D. is a year older and a lot bigger and Z. is one of those wiry, hyper and freakishly speedy kids. They both outpace him and AJ doesn�t understand why. It�s kind of heart-breaking to watch him struggle to keep up. �I just wanted to be in front but I was too tired and they wouldn�t let me.�

But while AJ may be struggling to keep up in some areas, in others he is distinctly not. His reading seems suddenly to have taken a big jump forward in both skill and confidence. He frequently disappears during the day and can be found lurking in some corner or another with a book. He no longer reads out loud all the time (although he sometimes still does because he enjoys it) and he�s no longer sticking to the picture books when left to his own devices. This week the book he is generally seen studying is a collection of Peanuts cartoons. The book collects a series of cartoons about Charlie Brown and categorizes them according to topic. One section is entitled �Writers Cramp.� Since AJ doesn�t know what writer�s cramp is, he keeps interpreting the title as �Writers Camp.� This evening, we were talking about reading and he said, �I know, Mommy! Let�s have Readers� Camp. You know, like Writer�s Camp?� Puzzled, I said, �That sounds like a great idea. What do we do?�

�You take a book and I take a book and we read. And sometimes we laugh about it.� So we sat next to each other reading and sometimes laughing.

The final AJ story of the evening, however, is one which will probably humiliate him later in life, but it had me laughing so hard that I think it�s possible I cracked a rib. AJ�s current bar of soap originally had a small plastic frog embedded in the middle of the bar. But with use, the frog has been extracted and put to other uses. As a result, the soap is now doughnut shaped, a thin ring of translucent blue. I handed AJ the soap in his bath this evening and went into the other room for a moment to find his pajamas. I returned to find AJ with a big grin on his face and the soap ring encircling his penis. �Look, Mommy! My pee-pee is hula-hooping!�

And with that indelible image, I bid you all good night.

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