Stars in his eyes

Atticus is 17 months old now. He can say several words, but the one that he's best at, and the things he loves most in all the world are stars. Or "tar", according to him.

I don't know how this fascination with the stars came about. But he definitely knows what they are. He loves being outside anyway, but if we are outside at night, his eyes are constantly trained on the skies, and he points to the white dots and calls out "tar!". He loves the moon, too - "Moo" - but not as much as the stars.

He also loves and can pick out drawings of stars anywhere. His brother loves drawing pictures of spaceships and space scenes, and there are multitudes of stars to be found on them. He also loves to draw, and will grab the texta and call out to me "tar". He is so happy when I take his hand and we draw stars everywhere! Occasionally I will draw stars on the backs of his hands. The first time I did it he was beside himself with joy! He just held up his hands, exclaiming "tar! tar!", and showed them to anyone that would look. Then he tried to lick them.

Last weekend I made a bit of an error in judgement and changed the sheets on his bed in the morning. When I tried to put him down for his midday nap, he wouldn't sleep, instead looking at the sheets and pointing at them. Yes, they were star-patterned sheets. If I'd done it before his night-time sleep, it would have been dark and he would have had a nice surprise in the morning. As it is he generally wakes up happy and pointing at all the stars anyway!

I can't wait until he has the dexterity to draw his own stars... I can't imagine that it will take long. Maybe he will become an astrophysicist one day.