A Toddler's Delight

Lucas is a very happy little boy. He almost always has a smile on his face and, like most kids, gets sheer delight from so many things - from seeing his sister first thing in the morning to seeing a bus pass in front of our house. To little ones, the simplest things are extremely exciting. But the thing that gets Lucas the most excited in life, by far, is seeing an animal. This child loves seeing a bird in the yard or an elephant at the zoo, but cats and dogs in particular create a special kind of exuberance. If we are on the street taking a walk and Luke spots a dog in the distance he will immediately get excited and scream "Dog! Dog!" until it is no longer in his line of vision. He has been known to tear off and chase after any dog that he sees (which reinforces our rule of always holding hands when out in public!) always keeping us on our toes.

Our neighbors dog, Duncan, is a total rockstar to my toddler. Lucas sometimes stakes out their yard or goes up onto their front porch to peek in the window, hoping to catch a mere glimpse of Duncan. Duncan, for his part, is a very old, very tolerant dog who graciously accepts the pokes and prods and ear-piercing squeals from his little fan everyday before smartly flopping down somewhere safely out of arms reach. Lucas is always more excited to see that Duncan in the yard or on his back porch than pretty much anything else in life.

He has a special love for cats too. Our other neighbors have an indoor cat, Tilda, who likes to hang out on their glassed-in front porch. The glass makes it very convenient for Luke to visit his kitty friend whenever he wants to, which is pretty much anytime he is outside (and Duncan is not). Our neighbors are very tolerant of (and luckily amused by) Lucas banging on their porch screaming "Cat!!" in sheer delight at every possible opportunity. The hilarious thing is that the cat is not exactly a people person, and sits there on the other side of the glass hissing at her crazed and adoring fan. Lucas has no idea that the cat is angry or mean, and just smiles and points and kisses the glass, completely oblivious.

This weekend we went to Marty's brother, Kevin's, house to celebrate Father's Day. Kevin recently got a kitten, Jack, who is about 3 months old and completely spunky and adorable. This poor kitten had no idea what was coming when Lucas came into the house and proceeded to follow him around screeching, squealing and screaming "cat! cat!" for pretty much every minute of the 5 hours we were there. It never got old. Halfway through our visit, Kevin's neighbor, who is 15 months old came over to visit her buddy Jack. She has obviously spent a lot of time with the kitten because she was clearly extremely comfortable with him. So comfortable, that she picked up the kitten and happily carried him around the house with her.

Well, once Lucas realized that you didn't have to just point to and pet the kitten, but could actually pick it up, all bets were off. He carted that kitten around as much as possible saying "Cat up!" with a huge grin for much of the afternoon. If he were to rank it, I'd think Lucas would say it was one of the best days of his life!