The Navigator

Ethan has a thing for maps. I think he inherited this gene from me because I have always been fascinated with maps too. When I was a kid my family was always taking long road trips somewhere and my dad had a box that he put in between the front seats of our full size van. That was the navigator seat and I always sat there. Yes, this was back in the day when babies moved from a car seat to a big person seat at age 2 and kids sprawled all over the car floor to sleep. Remember those days? Yes [GASP] I sat in the front row with no seat belt and a make-shift seat!!! My parents should be in jail. Ha ha.

Anyway, on these road trips I spent much of the time looking at the atlas and navigating which way to go. Of course my dad already knew the route, but he was nice enough to humor me and let me dictate the trip. I loved to scout out rest stops along the way and I always got excited when we would approach and interchange. I thought it was amazing to watch the map in my hands come to life on the road.

So Ethan must have gotten his love of maps from me. He even likes to draw his own maps of things and then make his toy cars act out the pretend route. This summer when we go to Texas we are going camping. I checked out the Cleburne State Park website and found a map of the park. I printed it off and Ethan foud it. He was thrilled to death when I told him we were going camping, but when he saw the map he was over joyed!

He has carried the thing around with him all day. It is so funny listening to him say stuff like "Okay mom, now this is the road we take to get into the camp, and this is where the tent goes, and this is where we go fishing..." I love it! Today we ran errands and he took the map with him, of course. He has barely taken his eyes off of it all day.