Dinosaurs

Ian doesn't like being kissed, for the most part. Whenever I ask him for a kiss, he usually continues looking at or playing with whatever he happens to be looking at or playing with--a book, coffee-cup sized plastic dinosaur, a fire truck, a wooden puzzle piece--and says, "No, no." At bedtime, when he's in the husband's lap, ready to read some books, and I lean down for a goodnight kiss, he always holds up his arm to my mouth and says, "Arm." (As in, Arm Only, Mommy.) And I go on with whatever it is I'm doing--watching Ian, marveling at how wonderful he is and how much I love him, at how he lately responds to "What's your name?" with "Hap-py." (Seriously. It's kind of beautiful, kind of ironic, kind of ridiculously cute.)

What Ian does like is to make his things kiss, stuffed animal or not--a white monkey and a penguin, a penguin and a bear, a plastic dragon and a toy block, a toy block and a froggie finger puppet. He's coming I think to the end of a phase where he brought me and the husband his things to kiss.

Holding up a white-puppy puppet: "Kiss, kiss."

"You want me to kiss the puppy?"

"Yah. Yah."

"Okay. Mmmwwa!" Big smack on dusty head of puppet.

Holding up a wooden a helicopter puzzle piece: "Kiss, kiss."

"You want me to kiss the helicopter?"

"Yah. Yah."

"Mmmwaa!" Smack on blade of propeller.

The other day, the husband tried to engage Ian in some fun, violent playtime with the plastic dinosaurs. Gnarling sounds, roars, wounds. Brontosaurus knocking Tyrannosaurus off the top of the block tower. Growling. Pretend fighting, pretend tearing of the pretend flesh like on the cover of Ian's National Geographic book, Dinosaurs.

Result: failure. Ian prefers his dinosaurs to kiss, for the flesh-eaters not to prey on the herbivores, for no blood to be drawn. This kind of makes me wonder about "human nature," that bogus term. It makes me wonder about a lot of things. I'm certain an interest in violence is on its way, and it's not as if Ian never gets angry. He throws things, he howls when he might not get his way. But dinosaurs, despite the pictures he's viewed so often in his National Geographic book, are in his mind a peace-loving breed of thing. They kiss a lot. They enjoy hugs. They are conflict free.