Parenthood: Week 419 – Slides & The Hulk

Slides

It seems like just a little while ago, Lucas was just barely mobile, and he is up on two feet. He doesn’t crawl at all anymore. He stumbles and falls quite a bit, but he is determined to be up on his two feet. With Ollie and Ethan, there was more of a transition when they would walk but still crawl a bit, but Lucas has been up on his two feet and determined to keep it going.

I didn’t generally think of Lucas as being as adventurous as Ethan. When Ethan was this age, he was full speed, running into things. Even now, when he goes outside, he runs away as fast as he can in the direction of a street. There’s a lot more chasing after him than there was for with Ollie.

While Lucas is a very calm child, in his mobility, he is very adventurous. When we go to a park, he goes off on his own, not worried about being too far away from us.

And then there are the slides.

Oh. My. Goodness.

That boy has no fear, and he just throws himself does these slides giggling the whole time down. As a parent, these moments fill me with joy, anxiety, and just disbelief that my little one is throwing himself down slides when it seems like just a little while ago, he could barely turn over.

The Hulk    

Ethan’s current favorite superhero is The Hulk. I don’t know exactly how he got introduced to him or when, but his love for The Hulk has taken off in the past two weeks. When he plays Avengers with Ollie, he takes off strips down to his underwear and screams, “Grr…I’m THE HULK! I’m angry because my shirt is ripped.”

Ethan thinks that The Hulk rips his clothing and THEN gets mad about it and becomes The Hulk. He has had many questions about this clothing and why and how The Hulk tears up his clothing.

Ethan has been fixated on wanting purple underwear so he can better dress up as The Hulk. So I found this two-piece outfit with a shirt that has a green printed torso and purple shorts. Ethan loves this outfit. He has worn it every day for the past week. It took some convening to get him to wear underwear under the purple shorts. I told him that The Hulk wears underwear under his purple shorts, which got Ethan to agree to do the same.

It is fascinating to me that Ethan has gravitated towards The Hulk. Out of all of my three sons, he is the one who is the quickest to anger.

I see the full range of emotions as not being “good” or “bad,” so I’m not stating this as a way to criticize Ethan. It’s just part of his personality. The Hulk, a character which is a meditation on anger, physical strength, and duality, Ethan has embraced. Maybe he seems himself in The Hulk, or perhaps this is a three-year-old’s way of processing his own emotion. Either way, it’s adorable, and the joy get out of his outfit and playing Hulk is one of the highlights of the past week.