A Morning with S4, Part Two

For breakfast we made chocolate chip pancakes. By we I mean I had two shadows, S3 and S4, who were determined to be the first to stir, the first to flip, the first to eat. I first drank a cup of coffee.

Husband was out to breakfast with a buddy so it was just the five of us. We just got our first snow of the year and it's measurable snow (well, technically we had a dusting the day after thanksgiving that was gone with the sunshine). We have about four inches, if you really stretch the ruler down into the grass. Just a bit north of us, where AD lives they were dumped with well over a foot of snow from the same lake effect snow storm. Anyhow, the boys were discussing going sledding as we ate our pancakes.

Just on a whim I looked to S4 and said “Hey, did you ever go sledding when you were a little kid?”

He chewed his pancake slowly as he began to sit higher in his chair until he was on his knees so he was as tall as any of us and with a swallow declared loudly “Yes, I did.”

“Really?” he had all our attentions now. “What happened?”

“Well,” he began, “When I was a little kid I went sledding out there (he points out the window) because I lived here, you know. And I went sledding for a little bit and then I got a Christmas tree all by myself.”

“Really?” S1 asked excitedly.

“Yah,” he answered as if to say 'duh!'. “You remember the tree because you were there too.”

“I was?” S1 asked.

“Yah, you rode the horses to pull the tree and you shot a deer while you were on the horse.”

“Cool!” S1 agreed.

“So you cut the tree down all by yourself?” I asked him.

“No, I was just a little kid. I was only five. S3 was three then.”

S1 began to snicker. “He just swapped ages with S3!”

“Yah, I was five,” continued S4, “And when I was done being five I turned, um...” He began counting quietly, one, two, three, four, five, six.... “I turned six. And then S3 was five!”

“So what did you do with the tree?” S2 asked.

“I decorated it all by myself,” S4 answered. “And then I opened all the Christmas prizes by myself cuz they were all for me. I had a Mater and Lightening McQueen and Doc and Mac and real road.” He sat down and speared another piece of pancake. “But that was when I was a little kid.”