this chapter of life

Last year, conveniently at the beginning of the year, Lucas started announcing what that day's "Chapter of Life" was called. I don't know where he came up with the idea. I didn't know how long he would continue this trend. But I, being the documentarian/documentist/documenter that I am, started jotting them down. You have no idea how pleased I was that he did it for the entire year, more or less. Every day didn't get a title. Sometimes a couple of weeks would go by chapterless-ly. But then, with seemingly no rhyme or reason, he would suddenly declare a new Chapter of Life!

So, here is a glimpse, a recap if you will, of Lucas's 2019.

This chapter of life is called...
01.25: musician Finley
01.27: the very very busy day
01.29: the very windy GUP crashing day
02.11: the bear tangle
02.12: the surprise
02.14: the heart monsters
02.16: the vitamin stacking show
02.17: the negative freeze
02.18: the zoom vipers
02.21: the panda show
02.22: the exploding octopod
02.27: the bear hunt
02.28: the surprise after breakfast
03.04: the tow truck smash
03.05: the big-footed little goo
03.06: the bear mess
03.07: the boys who like to eat parallelograms
03.11: the sharks on tails
03.12: the balloon dance
03.13: trains galore
03.15: the ginormous car mess
03.16: the bears in jails
03.18: the climbing pandas who eat sandwiches
03.22: the walk
03.23: Big Bear's song
03.24: the boys and the bears and the balls
03.27: the three ups trucks
03.28: the ship
03.29: Big Bear and the slide
03.29: the jungle gym daddy
03.31: monster Lucas
04.02: the fox brother
04.03: the unexpected pig at breakfast
04.04: the thousand invisible monsters
04.05: the cars, the bears, and the baby in the chair
04.07: pushing Daddy
04.09: Finley the cat
04.10: the nature walk and the garbage truck
04.12: the very heavy bucket
04.14: planes galore!
04.18: Lucas and the string
04.20: Lucas and Finley clean the floor with cars
04.21: Lucas's first Dr Seuss book
04.24: the really fast dancers
04.25: the beautiful picture
04.27: the unexpected visitors
04.29: the ball snowman
05.01: the car seat fight
05.03: the most exciting times
05.04: the pandas drink too much water
05.05: "There are some monsters-. Wait, where did they go?"
05.12: the second missing Lucas
05.19: the mystery sound part 2/feathers galore part 1
05.20: the mystery sound part 3/feathers galore part 2
05.22: Big Bear and the obstacle course
05.23: the echo part 3 - the one where Furball feels unloved
05.30: Big Bear has grown
05.31: the mystery of the whooshing blurs
06.01: the meowing jar
06.05: Big Bear teaches Lucas how to read cat language messages
06.06: the pearl chase
06.10: the walking hat
06.11: cleaning the floor with cars again
06.15: the... running foods?
06.17: the hula hooping contest
06.20: Lucas and Finley and the fish
06.22: a sleepy tale
06.24: lots of mysteries
07.02: the very weird butterflies
07.04: the ball chase
07.05: the mischievous mouse
07.07: the earthquake
07.08: the tornado part 2
07.09: the running speck of dust - where the mischievous mouse is caught
07.10: Lucas-tastrophe!
07.17: Big Bear's baseball
07.19: the treasure part 1
07.21: the crashing lot
07.24: big poop, small poop, balloon poop..? all poop
07.29: the case of the missing fly fruit
07.30: the meowy sucking machine
08.04: the tangled squid - the one where Big Bear gets poisoned by the poison thing and Peso gets a squid all tangled up in bandages
08.09: the recipe
08.10: the ball mess
08.12: the alert
08.17: my sweet... smoke?
08.19: the two spies
08.22: the case of the missing mudskipper
08.24: the green upstairs
08.29: the runaway giraffe
08.30: the animal chase
09.12: the mess and the mice
09.15: the crumby mess
09.17: the splat-icane
09.18: the flood
09.20: the syrup-y splotch
09.21: the galaxy flooded with fishy biscuits part 1
10.07: the big tangle and the very noisy day
10.10: the house destruction
10.11: the mess soup robber
10.13: the second hurricane
10.15: the second hurricane part 2 and 3 and the house destruction part 2
10.16: the moon disaster
10.21: the truffula problem
10.24: the moon hurricane
10.25: the glump destruction
10.31: the creature's poisons everywhere
11.01: activate octobears?
11.03: the dirt and dye paintings
11.04: the seashore assembly
11.05: too many animals
11.06: the destruction
11.08: silly songs with Lucas and Finley, featuring Big Bear
11.11: the poison factory (the poisonous creatures wrote this)
11.14: operation moon
11.15: operation moon part 2
11.16: Big Bear's contraption part 1 and 2
11.17: Little Dog's mischief machine
12.10: the plan
12.18: the mischief tiger part 1

So there you go. Congratulations if you made it through. You now have a pretty accurate look into the mind of a 4/5-year-old and it is possibly the most unique tribute to 2019 you'll ever come across.

I love, so much, the way this kid's mind works. Some days I never quite know what is going on in there. Other days, I can predict to the moment what he's going to say when. He is such a fascinating mix of creativity/silliness and reason/precision, and I love him quite a bit.

Lucas, may your 2020 be even more ridiculous than your 2019!