Optimus Prime

Last week I went out of town for a couple nights for business.

While I was away, Casey went to swim lessons. Twice.

It's not that he wasn't going to swim lessons before. He was. It was just that ever since he began working himself into a literal fever at the thought of swim lessons, he was attending Marcie's parent-child class instead of his own class. Luckily, the coach Mercedes was really good about letting Jason take Marcie and taking Casey with her. And then all of a sudden on Tuesday Casey said he was ready to go to his own class. And did. And repeated it on Thursday.

I think it must help that he has a new teacher (not the one of the younger kids' class, which I think is part of the reason he didn't like swim lessons).

Anyway, Jason and I promised that if he learned to swim this summer, we would buy him Optimus Prime, this giant talking transformer who says wily things like, "My name is Optimus Prime." (Wonder who thought that one up.)

It cost us a small fortune. When did kids' toys creep up in price to $50 a pop?

Then today Casey found a toy car and he wanted a race track to run it on. We told him no, of course. He said he wanted it instead of Optimus Prime (even though he's been coveting the Transformer for months). We still said no. He screamed. He stomped. And still, we said no.

Finally he said he didn't want Optimus Prime anymore. I told him that was fine-- that we'd just throw him away or give it to a child who really wanted it. And Casey could just go without. But he still was not getting a race track. Period.

It took him a couple hours to work through his anger and his sadness. And finally he came back to me and said, "Mommy, I think I just changed my mind. You don't have to give Optimus Prime away. I'll just play with him."

Like he was doing me some big favor.

Five year olds. They're like miniature teenagers.