Hybridized Dragons

Barley had a rough night on Thursday last week. I don't even recall what brought on the major melt-down, but minutes after arriving home from work, and also minutes away from departure time for cub scouts, he was locked in the bathroom, refusing to come out.

Although I am his cub scout den leader, we have rotated who leads each den meeting, so I was not required to host the event this week. Just as well, since we were clearly not going to make it. Could I drag him out of the bathroom and make him go? Probably. But he would be a total pill while there and I saw no real benefit to subjecting the other boys to his fit.

He eventually calmed down and came out. We talked a little about emotions and mood, and he was at least able to articulate that he was still in a horrible mood and didn't want to go anyway, even if we could catch some of the meeting.

He instead started drawing a family of dragons. There was one for each of us in the family.
He was describing them to me as he drew: Mommy, your dragon has SIX wings, and only two legs. My dragon has only two wings, and FOUR legs. I am going to draw everyone as a different type of dragon.

I joked with him that if I was the Mommy dragon, and he was my son dragon, shouldn't we look the same? Or a little alike? (Note: Barley is my virtual twin, not only in appearance, but temperament)

He looked at me quite seriously and said, "Mommy, my dragon is adopted!"

I had to chuckle a bit, as we have talked about adoption a lot in our house. DH and I were both adopted, and we find it completely amazing that the boys look alike and have any resemblance to either of us. Growing up in families where no one looks like anyone else makes the whole idea of genetics pretty cool. Like our family (and every biological one) is some offshoot of the original Mendel pea plant experiment in gene theory.

On a separate note, his use of color is telling. I wonder if there is any real significance there, or he just ran out of time before he had to go to bed.