Persistence of memory, round II

Last night, I was drying my boy after his bath when he decided to line up all the marine animal toys that are part of his daily bath. He has more than a dozen animals in the menagerie including 2 whales and 2 sharks.

Then he made up a sing-songy verse, imitating the words from this Eric Carle book.

The book features a dozen endangered species (No, we didn't buy the book. It was a present), each one introducing the next animal.

So, a la Eric Carle, my son says: "Sea lion, sea lion, what do you see? I see an octopus swimming by me. Octopus, octopus, what do you see? I see a mako shark swimming by me." Et cetera, et cetera.

Now, I've read this book more than a dozen times to him, but it never occurred to me how much he had absorbed from that book.

In fact, I feel certain that he isn't listening somtimes when I am telling him to clean up his toys.

But other times, he's intently listening and remembering what he heard, and he'll stir up that memory again when the opportunity arises.

His memory is very random. The other day, he kept chatting about a video about dump trucks, recalling what the main character said and did, as if he just saw it yesterday. But it's been at least 4 months since he watched the thing.

The weirdest moment was a few days ago when we saw a pregnant lady and I explained, "You were once a baby inside my belly and then we went to the hospital to get you out."
Then he tells me, "But I was stuck and I couldn't come out."

What's crazy is he's absolutely right. After 20 hours of labor, there came a point when he was literally stuck and I didn't have the energy for that last push. The doctor set a deadline of 15 minutes before he would resort to a Caesarian. Then I channeled my reserves to push with all my might so that surgery wouldn't be necessary.

I stared at my son, who is nearly 4, and asked him, "Do you really remember that?" I know we have never, EVER discussed his birth in that sort of detail before.

He nodded and smiled, then changed the course of the conversation by grabbing his monster truck.