It all started with an innocuous little book that I received from one of my co-workers in Bozeman well before Tyce was born. It was called "My First Dinosaur Boardbook" and had realistic images of about ten different dinosaurs along with some facts about each (but curiously, no pronunciation key). About the time that Tyce was six-months old he started really liking the book and, not wanting to misinform my budding paleontologist, I brought the book into work and had my dinosaur-loving co-worker walk me through the pronunciation of each type of dinosaur.A year or so later one of Todd's coworkers decided to clean out his bookshelf and passed on the book "Dinosaur Fact Finder" to Tyce. This book quickly became (and remains to this day) one of the most-loved books in the house. Each of the 243 pages features one dinosaur with a drawing, a informative summary, and (Tyce's favorite feature) a little drawing in the corner that shows the dinosaur's size relative to a human. And so the day has come that Tyce knows more about dinosaurs' names, diets, and lifestyles than I do. His natural curiosity and fascination with dinosaurs completely outpaces my own.
He has many toy dinosaurs that he plays with daily and often pretends that he is a dinosaur and enlists all family members and friends to be part of his herd (is that what you call a group of dinosaurs?) or his prey. Like most little boys, the carnivores are his favorites but he also likes herbivores that have interesting features, like Parasaurolophus, with it's long head crest (he sleeps with a stuffed Parasaurolophus that he has affectionately named "Good Guy") or Pachycephalosaurus with it's "enormously thick skull roof," which, Tyce explains, is "for giving knuckle bumps, but with their heads!"
Last weekend Grandma Heather gave Tyce a Zoobook magazine all about dinosaurs and he has been poring over it ever since. Luckily for me, it has detailed explanations of the various theories as to why dinosaurs went extinct, which I only vaguely recalled from college geology classes and Tyce has been curious about. He now tells me that "volcanoes made a giant rock hit the earth and that killed all the plants." A little out of order and I'm not sure if he understands how a lack of vegetation could lead to the death of all dinosaurs, but close enough. Much to my horror, he has also stated, "When I die, I hope I turn into hard bones for people to find." Not what any parent wants to hear!
This morning we were reading his dino magazine together for a bit before I had to start making breakfast. Tyce carefully lined his finger up under the text and followed along as he "read" the following off the pages: "What dinosaurs eat gives them energy and helps them DESTROY germs. The dinosaurs dance a ballet when it is showtime!" The later part of that can be attributed to Tyce's good friend, Amelia, who takes ballet and often drafts him into her performance art pieces, despite his complete lack of showmanship. Much to Amelia's chagrin, Tyce usually insists on stomping around and breathing loudly, which he seems to think are the hallmarks of being a dinosaur.
Delaney has also embraced the dinophilia* that is so rampant in our home. She happily shouts out "Tyranosaurous Rex" when asked about her favorite dinosaur and Tyce can spend countless minutes explaining the intricacies of dinosaur imagination play to her. They happily chase each other around the kitchen island pretending be dinosaurs that are "fast runners" or wrestle on the floor like "meat eaters." But the most interesting game is when they each make a neat pile of blanket, fill it with a random assortment of round objects, and pretend to "hatch dinosaur eggs" and care for the babies. I think that they actually associate eggs with baby dinosaurs more than baby chickens!
*Note: dinophilia actually means "abnormal affection towards dizziness or whirlpools" not "the love of dinosaurs," as intended in this blog, but I think that the kids might have that too.
