Four IS Where Its At

Eli is brother number three. As Chas (#2) looks up to AJ (#1), Eli looks to Chas. Chas is four years old now. He gets to go to school and play with friends. He is cool. Just as Chas fretted when AJ was dropped at school, so now does Eli when Chas is dropped.

"I want Chas. I miss Chas. I want Chas to come home now."

This soon turns to: "When can I go to school? Where is my school? Can I go with Chas?"

Today after dropping Chas at school we went grocery shopping. Eli (and I) love the mini shopping carts at Smiths. He pushes his cart behind me and accepts what I put in it, tries to add to it, and I try to avoid being run over. We came home and he wanted to play Hide-and-Seek.

"I'm counting to four cause I'm four," he said. Then proceeded to count to 17. If I was counting he would tell me to count to four, not really caring what number I ended at. Sometimes he would stop me. " Don't count yet because I'm going to do a different plan." He'd look around and decide his next hiding spot then say, "This is where I'm going hide, or "I will hide behind the green couch, now count to four!"

Four is the number all good things come in. "Four cookies please, four grapes please, I want four pickles!" It doesn't matter what number he actually gets as long as its at least three and you don't try to argue the numbers with him. He doesn't care. Four is the number. Logic is irrelevant. Like the rabbits in "Watership Down," anything beyond four is thousands and if you can't have thousands of mm's, well then the next best number is four!