It All Comes Back to George

Recently my son was standing stark naked in the middle of his bedroom and, pointing to his train engine, said what I thought to be "I have Josh engine nudie, Mommy." It's actually rare that I can't decipher something he says, so I asked him what he meant and he said, "You know, like George has monkey engine nudie?" Ohhh. Monkey ingenuity. Curious George. Got it. So, I gently said, "I think you mean ingenuity, sweetheart," and he, being the child he is, made me explain what that meant in the kind of speak a three year old would use. I'm still not sure he gets it, so if anyone knows how to helpfully put that word into simple meaning, let me know.

A lot of events in our house or our lives seem to come back to George. Should we build a sandcastle? Of course we should. George did. Should we go to the zoo and look for a baby panda? Duh, if George did it, it's on our to-do list. It's funny to me, though, how much I've actually learned from this sweet little show and from how much my son adores George. George is just unashamedly himself, he takes everything quite literally and approaches nearly everything, with the possible exception of cleaning his room, with abandon. Just like a 3 year old. My son has found his hero.

This devotion to George has a great upside for us- if George has done it, we can reference it and generally Josh will be on board. Lately, though, I'm watching the man in the yellow hat a little more intently and trying to learn some lessons in laughter and patience. George has, in turn, cost him hundreds of dollars over a miscommunicated donut order, totally trashed his house more than once and made it possible for him to wake up with a pig licking his face. His response? He laughed. I'm not so sure I would find it so funny to wake up to Mike the pig in my bed, so I've got to hand it to him. No matter what George does, no matter how much the man in the yellow hat is probably in his right to be totally angry, he sees the intent. He sees his innocent little heart and what George was trying to accomplish and so he usually rolls his eyes, laughs, gently explains to George where his plans went awry and then they clean up the mess together. Next day, new episode, new misadventures, more patience. All this, and still no one can see fit to give the poor guy a name.

I figure if he can keep it together when George has emptied every food container in his house and buried the contents in his yard, there isn't much I should react to before first finding out what my son was trying to do. 99% of the time, he has a very logical reason for whatever he's done and while I don't have a yellow hat, I might start wearing my hot pink, wide-brimmed straw hat more often just to take myself a little less seriously. If anything, it would at least make the neighbors laugh.