Sunday night while lying with Ed as he settled to sleep, John got him talking about being excited to go back to school to see his friends. This led to Edward admitting that he doesn't always understand what his friends are talking about because many have video games that he's not familiar with. I'm surprised that the HUGE light bulb that went on over John's head didn't jar Ed from his pre-sleep.
John waited a few beats and then Edward said, "Will you get me one of those?" John advised that he could put it on his Christmas or birthday wish list. "OK, I'll ask Santa...oh, wait. I'm already asking Santa for my big snowman. Well, maybe I'll ask Grandma and Grandpa." Ha! Nice try, kid. John let him know that this type of gift was more than he could ask for from someone else, but suggested that he could change his request to Santa if he wanted to.
Then he bolted downstairs to work with me on a plan to infiltrate Edward's subconscious.
Turned out, there really wasn't any plotting necessary. All John had to do was ask this morning at breakfast, "Hey, Edward, do you think maybe you'd want to build your own snowman, and I'll help you, and then you can ask Santa for a DS?" (a hand-held video game toy)
"Yeah!!! Can we start right now."
Well, no. We're not getting into snowless snowman construction at 7:30 on a school morning. But we're looking ahead to some weekend construction.
In the meantime, John has found some info online on papier mache, specifically, how to create a giant jack-o-lantern (oversize garbage bag stuffed with newspaper,) which, if not decorated for Halloween, might make the perfect bottom snowball for a snowman large enough to climb into.
John and I actually spent the two hours we had free while my parents took the boys to their hotel to swim on Saturday afternoon wandering around three different hardware/home improvement stores seeking inspiration. We came up with a few possibilities, but it still was going to be a Herculean effort, and there was no telling whether, in the end, our vision would match Edward's. We were afraid of putting in all the time, effort, and expense of making this thing and having him come down on Christmas morning and wail, "That's not what I meant!"
Oh, and he did bust me on the "Santa doesn't do electronic toys" comment regarding the snowman, but we decided that because the DS is so common (apparently every one of his friends has one) that Santa could figure it out. "Or," says Edward. "He could just go to the store and buy one." Yeah, that Santa...always looking for the easy way out.
