Ollie and Pals

Ollie's late enrollment in preschool this fall has a little something to do with the fact that he would scream wildly and sob everyday after dropping Cass off--for several hours. And once we got home, I'd make valiant fort-building, super hero-flying, matchbox-racing, age appropriate book-reading attempts to ease his lonely heart, but the only thing he wanted to do was pull up a stool to the front window and wait for Cass to get home. He'd sit there so patiently, murmuring, "Cassie? Cassie come home now?" He was so confused his first day of school when we dropped Cass off at his classroom and proceeded to another room down the hall. I'll never forget that look--a cross between disappointment and sheer terror--when he realized he wasn't going to be in Cass' class; that thought had never occurred to him. A couple months later, he's happily settled in a classroom of his own, but he still tends to follow Cass everywhere, do everything Cass does, and accept all Cass' friends as his own. I make a point of doing special things with Ollie on Mondays and Fridays when he stays home, but he misses Cass so much. I'm beginning to suspect he may have invented a few buddies to help fight off the lonelies; to comfortably fill the absence of his big brother.

Meet Blue Dragon (pictured above). One day, Ollie picked up this rag-tag embroidered dish towel someone left at our house on Thanksgiving and started cradling it like an injured baby kitten, stroking it lovingly and calling him Blue Dragon. First he said he spotted him outside in the shrubs, then suddenly, there was Blue Dragon: right in our very own living room! The first day Blue Dragon arrived he wouldn't put the thing down: He carried it to the coffee shop, to school, to the market... he took a nap with Blue Dragon, falling asleep with it fanned out over his face. Ollie has loosened the reigns a bit since then, but Blue Dragon is still a regular in the house.

Oh, and there's also Posco Tosco. We have no idea who this is, but Ollie talks about him constantly. One day he'll say that Posco Tosco goes to school with him, another day he'll tell me that Posco Tosco is a super hero. He calls almost everyone in our family Posco Tosco, many of his friends and almost all his toys. The other day he asked if we could go to Posco Tosco's house. 

We have been talking about his birthday party, which he's well-aware is approaching in February. We asked him who he'd like to invite. He rattled off one or two three-year-olds from his class at school, before reciting almost every single name from Cass' kindergarten roster. Then, quickly, feeling badly for forgetting. "And Posco Tosco!"