The Countdown Is On!

Micah loves the camp that our church does for kids of elementary age. He loves church in general, but his love for church camp far supersedes his love of regular church. I highly suspect the daily swimming has something to do with it. Sometimes, in the middle of winter, he'll ask to go to camp. We have to tell him that camp is just not happening for a very long time and pray that he develops temporary amnesia, because that boy has a one track mind when it comes to things that he wants to do. Elephants have nothing on remembering things compared to Micah's ability to retain information.

Last week Micah decided that it was camp time. Despite our best arguments that it certainly wasn't camp time, and showing him on the calendar, and counting days with him, and telling him how many sleeps he'd have to do before camp, he was adamant that camp was tomorrow and he needed to pack for it. So he did. He packed his toothbrush and toothpaste, body spray and deodorant, and melatonin.

I unpacked it, because it was over two weeks until camp time and he needed to brush his teeth before then.

The next morning he packed again. And I unpacked it. So he packed it the next morning. And I unpacked it again and hid his body spray and deodorant. (His pits don't sweat yet, so he's not in dire need of either of those items.)

I finally had the bright idea to make a countdown chain like schools do for Christmas. You know the little loops of construction paper that you cut off each day? That's what we made. And we stapled it to a picture of Micah at camp that he'd been carrying around for weeks, showing us where he wanted to go. I had Luke put a calendar date on each loop so we knew where we should be in the cutting in case we missed a day. It is the highlight of Micah's morning to get the scissors and cut off one loop, then count how many days until LOOK IT'S CAMP TIME UP THERE! We are inside single digits at this point, and we're all grateful for that.

Micah cut off his loop this morning and counted 6 more days until camp. And then when he came home from town today he got the scissors and cut off another loop and was so thrilled that he was one day closer that he had to come find me and tell me. That child was not a happy camper when I taped it back on so that he could re-cut it tomorrow.

New milestone in Micah's development: he can reason that if he does X amount of things before a certain time, that certain time should come faster. Right?