Youthful tears

Tales from a Saturday morning...

Owen, our 4 year old, comes down the stairs holding his ever-present Barney the purple dinosaur. With that amazing youthful attribute of being fully awake about 2 seconds after opening his eyes in the morning, he looks at me with his eyes stretched as big as possible. "Daddy!", he says breathlessly, "Do you know what day it is!?"

I ponder for a moment, trying to guess what "the day" is. Usually it's something like "green day" or "foggy day", whatever strikes his fancy as he gets out of bad. "Purple day" is my answer.

The wide open eyes quickly shut as tears begin to fall. The excited voice quickly muffles. "Daddy", sadness quickly escalating into despair, "you mean today isn't my birthday? It's not my birthday!?" Sobs fall uncontrollably as Barney dangles from his hand.

"No, it's not your birthday today"... I walk over, pick him up, and try to hug the sadness out. I can only guess that he must have been dreaming about his birthday (he's got another 8 months to go) and walked downstairs fully expecting it to be true. Within seconds, the tears are gone, the sadness forgotten, and we're off to an exciting Saturday.