Monday, May 11, 2009

Saturday, May 2, 2009

What Will He Be?

As parents, "what will he be" is one of our pet musings. Anytime Dominic exhibits a knack for something, whether it be identifying crumbs and dirt, obsessively turning pretend screws, wiping his sister's mouth, attentively watching YouTube videos, or running around like a maniac, we are sure to be caught saying, "Maybe he'll be x when he grows up." Yes. Maybe.

Maybe he will be a janitor. Dominic is second to none for his uncanny ability to notice undesirable specks on the floor. After brilliantly identifying them for us as "dirt" or "crumb" or "gaw-bidge," he then masterfully instructs us what needs to be done, "sweep" or "vacuum" or simply "away." Previously we thought he had potential to be a janitor because he desired to sweep and vacuum himself. However, now that he has gotten wiser, he insistently tells us what needs to be done. As a result, we no longer think this is a career for him.

Instead, maybe he'll be a mechanic, engineer, or some sort of contractor. After all, the wooden toolbox set he got for Christmas was a huge success. He's clearly genius since he figured out how to operate the play screws, twisting several "nuts" onto the "bolt." He constantly tries to "fix" things with them and has also used his toy screwdrivers and play knife to try to jimmy open a lock. I guess he saw me do this once. So, not only does he clearly have aptitude with screwdrivers, but he can hammer! You should listen to him, boy can he really hammer. We need a mechanic. I think I'd like that. He can be just like Popper.

So while that's still a live possibility, I also entertain the notion that he'll be a caregiver of some sort. Really, for a rambunctious two-year-old, he has been unbelievably sweet to Cate. He is gentle, kind, and surprisingly helpful. The moment, though, that I thought he might have it in him to be a doctor or something, was when he wiped up her spit up, unprompted. We were all sitting at the table after supper, and Dominic was playing with his toys while Cate jumped in the doorway. Cate had spit up in her tray and, although we had noticed, we were still sitting there, enjoying the fullness of supper. But while we sat, Dominic, without any prompting, took the burp cloth out of the basket, walked over to her, wiped up the mess, turned it over, gently dabbed her mouth, and then tried to figure out where to put it, now that it was dirty. So, will he just be a great big brother? Or a doctor, like his Papa?

But if that doesn't pan out, maybe he'll be a cellist. He shows real potential. We've been manipulating his young mind by showing him YouTube videos of different instruments. We showed him the cello, violin, trumpet, and french horn so far. After the cello he said, "more, more" when he ended. But after violin, trumpet, and french horn, he said, "Cello, more." While this alone was convincing to us young parents, for you skeptics, more solid proof of his future career came when we were reviewing letters at breakfast one morning. The game is, I show him a letter, and he tells me its name. Recently, I've started saying a word that starts with that particular letter after he identifies it. "R," he says, "R says Red," I say. Then we get to "Y". "Y" he says. I say, "Y says yo-yo." Our smarty Dominic protests, "No," and he shakes his head. "YoYo Ma," he insists. Thinking this was just a fluke. I question him, "And what does YoYo Ma play?" When he correctly answered, "cello" without any hesitation, I secretly gloated and rejoiced that he may be a cellist yet. It's a secret dream of mine. Ah, the power of suggestion; his little desires seem to be falling in line with our plan rather nicely.

So what'll it be? I guess we'll have to wait and see.