Santa, Death & Dreams

I realize I post mainly pictures on here rather than Evan's developmental growth. I was telling these stories at work and realized, perhaps Evan would like to know these things one day. And if it wasn't for my awful memory, I would guarantee I would remember...just to cover my bases here is a post about Santa being pretend, How Evan learned about death and Evan telling me about a dream he had.

Santa-
Evan has now at 3 years old, questioned Santa's existence twice. Once while I was wrapping presents for family members and Evan found a Thomas the Train bag and he pulled it out and clearly said Hey, Are you...SANTA? To which I replied that bag was for a gift mommy & daddy were getting for him and Santa will bring his own on Christmas Eve. We then promptly went and bought wrapping paper he has never seen that came from Santa.

The second time, Evan was in his car seat and started a verbal list of things that are pretend: Star Wars is pretend, Halloween is pretend, Santa is pretend.

Death-
I recently mentally practiced my talk about dying with Evan as we had a VERY close call after our beloved Razz ate a squirrel. Fortunately, I did not have to use it as he pulled through like a champ (and too many vet bills later). Unfortunately, Uncle Alec's cat died the same week. I had put off the talk as he had not questioned me where he went.

However, Evan had found a HUGE grasshopper in our house last week that we chased and watched all over the house and Evan would look for it every morning...well he found it dead. He looked completely alive and Evan tried to catch it to find out it didn't move. He started crying and told me it died. He knows the word dying but not the concept. I told him that it was okay that the grasshopper died because now he won't have pain anymore, that he can still remember him and think about him whenever he wants to and that some people believe that when you die you come back as something else like a butterfly or a tree...to which he promptly cut me off and said "Or a grasshopper!" He got very excited and I decided to tell him Uncle Alec's cat Caesar died because he was sick and now he is not hurting and he can think about him and look at pictures and Evan asked me all bright eyed 'He is a grasshopper too?'

It was precious.

Dreams-
Yesterday Evan woke up and came to tell me he was playing with his friend from school (Jayden) and they were building something and he was playing with another boy named Evan that looked like him. He was very excited that he was able to play with another Evan who looked identical. We talked a bit about what we all dreamed that night (daddy didn't remember his dream so he made something up so he could join in).