Sweeping

Sebastien helped me clean the sidewalk in front of the house this morning. He's caught a cold, so he's been rather quiet all day and not feeling well.

This evening, I lay in the boat bed with him as he fell asleep. I had told him a couple days ago that this was a magic boat. He started a whole stream of consciousness from there:

"This is a magic bed and it can take me anywhere I want to go. Yesterday, I wanted to go to Balakordia [made-up word]. I said, 'Take me to Balakordia, boat,' and it took me to Balakordia. You can imagine there's water all around the boat. There's water on the floor. Imagine is when you can see something but it isn't really there. And you can imagine there's moonlight. And there are waves in the water. Not big waves, but little waves. And I've got all my friends [stuffed animals] in the boat with me. Alfie and Freddie...and Poop Bear... are my best friends. But all the others are just friends...sometimes they're my best friends, too. But I have all my friends in my boat. And that makes me very happy. Friends make you happy.

[Breaks into a toddler rendition of 'The more we get together, together, together, the more we get together, the happier we are.']

And you can imagine there are more friends in the boat, too. You can imagine all my alphabet friends are in the boat [the animals on the alphabet pictures that hang on his wall]. And sometimes, if I don't want to go anywhere, I just say, 'Boat, I want to stay here,' and we stay here. It's a magic boat..."