My Son, Lightning McQueen

Have I mentioned that Drew likes Lightning McQueen? Lately he more of less insists we call him Lightning. If you try to talk to him and call him Drew, he corrects you by saying, "No, I Lightning." He refers to me as Mater (the tow truck from the movie Cars) more often than he calls me Mom, and I'm sure strangers out there wonder in what language does Mater mean mom or mother. Zach is Chick, and until tonight Mike has been Doc, but it seems maybe he changed to Guido tonight. Earlier this afternoon Drew told me he wanted to start calling me Ramone, but I don't know if he'll actually make the change or not. And, honestly, I'm not sure what I'd rather have people out there hearing my 2 year-old call me- Mater or Ramone. There's something a little comical about Ramone, since it's a regular (though unique) name, as compared to Mater, which seems to be just something the Disney people made up.

Drew likes to take his fantasy world to the next level quite often. Some examples:

-If someone (like a kid at the library or something) is bothering, he revs his engine at them (which sounds much like a growl).

-He calls his shoes his racing tires more often than he calls them shoes.

-He tells me race cars don't go potty, and instead he'll say, "Mater- I need to change my oil!" to let me know he needs to potty. I'm just waiting for him to tell me he backfired after he toots sometime.

-He calls his bed his "traveling truck named Mack," and he says, "Now I going to sleep in my traveling truck named Mack," when he naps and goes to bed.

-Anytime we are walking somewhere, take the dogs for a walk, walking in a store, etc., we have to stop frequently so he can say, "On your marks, get set, go!" and then we race. On the rare occasion that I'm The King (Mater doesn't race, so if it's Zach, Drew, and me out for a walk, we've got Chick, Lightning, and I'm The King), the boys bonk me into the infield and then Drew recreates one of the last scenes in the movie, where Lightning pushes The King across the finish line. I imagine this scene to be quite hilarious to onlookers, because basically Drew puts his hands on my butt and attempts to lift/push me forward. Frankly, sometimes he gets a little more personal than I'm comfortable with.

Oh, this kid keeps us laughing. He really loves anything pretend, and now he's gotten to where he pretends to be something other than Lightning, but his name is still Lightning. For example, during dinner tonight, I was eating some spinach salad. Drew suddenly wanted to pretend he was a giraffe and have me feed him a piece of lettuce like we've done at the zoo before. So he was "Lightning Giraffe" and I was "Mater Person" since I was playing the role of the person feeding the giraffe.

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