I Need One of Those!!

Last week, the kids and I were hanging out at the mall to window shop and play on the playground. We parked outside of JCPenny's where the hair salon is just because I was bored with my normal parking area which is closer to the playground. We needed some new scenery!

By the time we were ready to go, I got to the glass doors and saw that it was pouring rain! At about the same time, Gavin called to tell me that there was a tornado warning and not to leave the mall until the storm had passed over a little more. So, there we were just hanging out in the entryway, watching the storm in front of the JCPenny salon.
We had only been there a couple of minutes when an elderly couple came out of the salon and expressed their surprise and disappointment at the rain in a way that only a cute elderly Texas couple could do. Once they figured out what to do, the husband was sent to go get the car while the wife sat down close by us and preceded to put on her plastic rain bonnet and wait for her car to arrive.

While we waited for the storm to die down, and she waited for her husband, the woman struck up a conversation with Ella. Elijah very surprisingly didn't say much and didn't really try to join in on the conversation, or introduce his little sister like he normally does. But I noticed that he was studying the woman and her rain bonnet. After a couple of minutes, he asked me what she was wearing and why she was wearing it. I told him it was a rain bonnet and it was for protecting her hair from the rain so that it wouldn't get messed up. He became curiously quiet again, while continuing to study the woman and her bonnet. Finally he got a look of, "By george, I've got it!" I smiled at him and asked him what he was thinking about and very determined and excited, he stated, "Mommy, I think I need one of those for my hair!"

The woman laughed at him and thought he was pretty cute, but I was thinking, "oh man, I hope he forgets about this encounter!" Elijah is very good at pretending like he has forgotten about these strange little interests, but really he stores them in the back of his mind and comes up with a plan as to how he can obtain whatever it is that he wants. And then one day three months down the road, we'll be walking through the hair product aisle in Target and he'll spot it. It will be on the very top shelf, in a little taped up box, with tiny lettering that says, "rain bonnet" and he'll see it. He has special sensors for these things (not sensors for rain bonnets, but for strange items that he thinks he needs). So, in a few months if you see a picture of Elijah in an old woman's plastic rain bonnet, you'll know why.