Monsters and incarcerated cookie cutters

Today Sam received in the mail a precious surprise from his Aunt Ruth, a set of new cookie cutters. You may note from earlier posts that Sam's been "helping" Susan make frosted sugar cookies. Well, Ruth heard of this and send along shapes including a pig, moon, heart, and various others, including Sam's favorite, an airplane.

Sam played with them constantly this evening. Even when he was allowed to watch Winnie the Pooh he requested that they watch with him.

When, after dinner, he went to play by himself, he came back, saying he was scared of monsters. (He had gone all of three feet from the table.) Then he said something we never expected to hear:

I'm scared maybe a monster will take my cookie cutters and put them in jail.

Hard to know exactly how to respond to that one! Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments...

Gingerbread Carnage

Almost forgot! Sam's had a couple of books is his rotation where the Gingerbread Man gets chased and eaten. One is a retelling of the classic fairy tale in a Western motif, the other a story in which the Big Bad Wolf manages to sweet-talk the librarian and ends up winning not only her confidence but also a bag of terrified little gingerbread men. (I really hadn't realized until recently that we are supposed to be glad that the Gingerbread Man, fugitive that he is, is caught and eaten. I always thought it was meant to be a sad story.)

So he requested to bake some dough-people himself and Susan obliged, baking some sugar cookies with him, in the shape of people and hearts. He was thrilled to be able to participate in their decoration, and I understand today they will put icing on the cookies.

Ooh, too other unrelated notes:

• Sam was coughing a lot yesterday so I had him use the inhaler. To get him to focus I grabbed the first thing I could find on the internet, an 80s music video for the song Take on Me by the Norwegian rock group A-ha. It has its moments, and Sam was riveted. In fact, he keeps asking to see it again, and asking about plot points in the tiny little plot of the video. Susan's disturbed by this, and if you image Sam with big hair and a Members-Only jacket, you might be too.
  
• I've mentioned the sock puppet Max which Susan made to pass the time with Sam. And I've mentioned that Sam would often rather talk to Max rather than either of us, even when there's no sock present and Sam is just a talking hand. I haven't mentioned that last night Sam, at one point, wanted to talk to Max, and put his own hand up to his face to make Max! It was short-lived. I think the excitement of talking to Max is less when he has to also answer. If this all sounds like the seeds of neuroses, I suppose I ought to mention that Susan, who has grown sick of Max (and Sam's constant demands to speak to Max), is thinking seriously of faking Max's death.

Tim