Mr. Tru

Posted by Kim on Monday Dec 23, 2013 Under Dear Tru

I’ve been putting this post off for a while now. Trying to capture the depth of your personality seems like a daunting task. A bit impossible, but these ideas having been growing, living, swirling and now colliding in my head, so I have to try to sort this out. Make some kind of sense of this. I created this blog as a way to document your life. A desperate attempt to remember all the many things that we do. Etch them into cyber space so I will have them forever at my fingertips because my head can’t wrap around it all. In 4 short years I already forget so much about baby Tru. It’s scary really. (As I wrote that sentence you just banged me in the back with your toy knife.) See? Another moment that I would surely forget, probably by tomorrow. But no. It’s frozen. Frozen right here in your little space.

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You change in drastic ways, but what I’ve always felt and noticed about you is your maturity. There’s a presence about you. It’s not one specific thing or event, but rather the consistency in which you act in every interaction, in every situation, each and every day. Always. The core of who you are. You always say please and thank you. You ask permission to do things. We have never, in any way, expected that from you…you just do it. I take no credit for your charms and wisdom. I want to! I really want to think that you got it all from me, but I was the most immature person to walk the earth. What I can take credit for is giving you my undivided attention. Real attention. You’ve got that. Always. When not from me, from daddy. When not from daddy, than from Poppy or Grammy. (Right now, you are outside with daddy riding your bike. Not watching tv. We do watch tv and it is then that I sit beside you and watch with you.)  Even as a baby, I never felt I really had a baby. Yeah, I can’t explain that one. Ok, maybe the fact that whenever you got hurt, you would reinact the incident as if to learn from your mistakes. And, crying. Since infancy, I can count on one hand how many times you’ve cried because each one is directly related to an injury. You just don’t cry.

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Fast forward…you would rather work than play. And I mean real work. I can’t give you something similar and make you think you are helping. No, you are too clever for that. You have to have real work. None of that fake busy stuff to keep you occupied. Like when we go to the grocery store. You help. You honestly help me, not just thrash around and give me more work to do. You find the things we need and use. You unload the cart. When I put laundry away, you help. You pull daddy’s socks out and you put them in his drawer…the right way. When I cook, there you are measuring, cutting, mixing and stirring. When I put dishes away, yep, you do that too. You put all the silverware in the right spot. Actually, the fact that you help me so much is precisely why I can’t do much school work at home. You want to help do whatever I am doing. The day you saw Lee in the yard spreading mulch, you stopped playing and ran a got your rake so you could help.

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But, it’s so much more than that. It’s your real understanding of others and the ways of the world. Your sense of respect guides you. We went to an antique store one day and we walked around and looked at everything. The next day I went back without you and the man told me he wanted me to know how well behaved you were in his store. Speaking of stores, there are times I am bored and ask if you want to ride to Marshall’s and I will get you a toy. I’m thinking you’d be all over that. To my surprise you usually say no. You tell me you don’t need any more toys that you already have too many. You love your toys, but you’d rather play with a person and just your imagination. And you have the whole thing played out in your head of how it should go so you tell everyone what to say when they play with you. Word. for. word. The whole time.

Christmas when you were 2. When you opened a gift, you hugged each box before you moved on to the next package.

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Christmas when you were 3. When you opened a gift, you studied each toy. Wanting to know what it did. You checked it out. So much so, that we were like, come on, get a move on or we will be here all night. You decided that you shouldn’t be the only one opening gifts, so you told everyone to get a package. When we told you they were all for you, you said it didn’t matter, you wanted for everyone to get a package and open one.

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Discipline – We have none. We don’t need any. You are so easy. You’ve always been the kind of kid that I can rationalize with, then you don’t do it. You understand. Everything makes sense and all is good in the world. We move on. That also works because we don’t abuse the word no. We only use it when necessary and that has led you to be an even better listener. It’s not blah blah blah, tune out the adult. You know when we say no, it’s for a real reason. You are either in danger or something else serious. I can’t think of what that would be right now, but you get the point.

When you see other kids, and adults for that matter, doing unfavorable things or acting ugly, you ask me with such concern, Why? You can’t fathom how a person could behave in such a manner. There’s an air of dignity to you. You would never be loud in public and draw attention to yourself. And that thing about crying…if you have gotten hurt out somewhere; you won’t cry…not in front of anyone.

You also have a great sense of humor. You have the most fun making silly faces…

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You just get things. Always have. You can laugh at yourself. When something goes wrong or you make a mistake, your common response is to laugh and say, “Silly me!” But you will make jokes out of things too. Like today when we got on the golf car to go to the beach. I started talking about how we could change the parking arrangement around so it would be more efficient and you said, “Well, where’s the golf car? Oh! bahahaha. Did you hear me momma? Get it? I said, where’s the golf car? We’re on the golf car!” Now this in no way applies to games on the iPad. That’s an entirely different story. You get plum mad when they don’t go right. Oh, you get so mad. But then I try and explain that you are playing your daddy’s games! You zoom through levels that he hasn’t even gotten to and you don’t care that you shouldn’t really be able to play these games, much less understand them. But, you do. Yet when I mess up on a game and get frustrated, you tell me it’s okay to keep trying and I’ll get better.

You approach life with a bit of caution. As though experience, of which you have none, would dictate. You don’t rush into things haphazardly. Full speed ahead like, well, a 4 year old. No, you survey things. Scan the scene. Analyze what’s going on and draw conclusions and make decisions. Actually, you do that better than me. You tell me a lot of times what we can/should do and not. Often I’m thanking you for the input because it was wise advice. I’m very often heard saying, “Glad I’ve got you!” And I mean it. We’ve learned in our house that we should listen to you. You are, more times than not, right. There are times when you know something and I can’t figure out how you knew that and when I ask you how you knew that, you answer, “I don’t know. I just know it.” And that about sums it up. You just know things. Wise beyond your years. You’re an old soul. I learn much about life from you.

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This post has turned into a bunch of me rambling and going all over the place. Maybe now you have some idea of what it’s like inside my head. I pack these things in and hold on to them and now they are erupting out. No real flow. No rhyme or reason. Just frantically typing before I forget.

I love you too much!

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