The Particular Toddler.Or, The Little Dictator.

I know it's a toddler thing to be bossy and easily obsessed, but when does it enter the Twilight Zone?  I may have to rename Sasha's baby book Tales of the Bizarre.

Every morning when the Bub wakes up, he calls for us to come and pick him up and carry him back to our bed.  Why he can't just get out of his own bed and walk to ours?  He tried and tried again, but couldn't make it work with his little arms.  Because he doesn't travel alone.  Each morning when I'm beckoned, I find him meticulously stacking his three prized pillows into a neat column, all upright and facing the same way.  (Remember Piggy and Sister Piggy?  They've been joined by a purple Hippo.)  Then I pick up him with the stack in his arms and carry him to the next room.  Recently, he's been telling me to carry him "like an elevator," whatever that means-- I believe it means to put him down with a crashing sound, but I'm just guessing and so far that appears to satisfy him.

Upon getting in our bed, he demands that Nerdy and I ditch our own pillows and lay our heads on the new arrivals.  Nerdy must remove her pillows from the bed completely.  But we can't just casually lay our heads down.  Oh no!  First, he carefully determines in the dark which one is which, then hands them out: Sister Piggy to Mamu, Piggy to Mama, and Hippo to the dictator.  They are set down, heads facing out, tags on the right, fluffy side up.  Hippo must be placed in the exact center of the bed. Only then we are allowed rest peacefully while he drinks his cup of milk.

Sometimes the orderliness is totally unfathomable.  One day we built Batman and Superman out of Legos.  Here they are:

As usual when Sasha is involved with Lego-building, things fall apart frequently and must be repaired.  Predictably, Superman had a Humpty Dumpty moment and had to be put back together again.  But, as you can plainly see from the following before and after photos, I did it WRONG.  The creature on the right is clearly a ROBOT, and NOT Superman.  The obvious difference, worthy of hysterics, is that the robot has a small-to-non-existent forehead.  Duh.  How could I have confused the Superman (36 Legos) with the robot (35 Legos)?

Fortunately for everyone, Sasha's need for perfection can at times be fooled by his own cleverness.  When we had an early birthday party for Sasha during the visit from the Wisconsin contingent, he received both a Spiderman mask and a Captain America shield.  After the party was over, he was wearing both when he sat on the floor and complained, "There's a ploblem."

"The ploblem is, I can be Spiderman and Captain America, but Spiderman isn't one of the Avengers."

We agreed that Spiderman was not a member of the Captain's posse.  He was perplexed, but it was time for bed, so that ploblem would have to be dealt with later.  By dawn the next morning, he had it all figured out.  He crawled into our bed with the shield and the mask, announcing that he was now Tony Stark.  (I forgot to mention this part of the morning bed routine: he is Tony Stark a/k/a Iron Man, I am Tony's friend James, and Mama is Tony's other friend, Pepper.  We have to have at least one conversation in character.)  "I'm Tony.  I'm wearing Spiderman's mask and I'm borrowing Captain America's shield.  [Pause.]  For a lot of, lot of days."  Ploblem solved.