pajama kid

most kids stay at home on saturday mornings, either to sleep in from a busy week of school and recess, or to sit in front of the television with a bowl of cereal watching cartoons.

but not pajama kid.

pajama kid forgoes the age-old tradition of Saturday morning cartoons and comes to Starbucks with his mother. He wears his floor length navy-blue fuzzy bathrobe, complete with fuzzy teddy bear slippers and his stuffed spotted leopard shark snuggled nicely in his left arm. His red hair epitomizes the meaning of "bed-head."

I watch pajama kid with great interest and amusement as he bounces up and down with excitement, his eyes gleaming with pure joy as his mother orders him a Venti vanilla bean frappuccino with whipped cream. He holds his mother's hand tightly and snuggles his messy little head in his mothers arm--completely unbeknownst to him that his warddrobe and fuzzy slippers make him stick out like a sore-thumb. Not that he would care. Oh, the days of blissful ignorance.

I find this whole situation endearing and I'm not entirely sure as to why. Maybe it's because I like that it seems that the kid is not being held to the same social standards that I find myself bound and obligated to uphold--i.e., he gets to wear his pajamas to public places and I don't. I admire his mother for risking her reputation of being a "good mother," by taking her kid to Starbucks and ordering him a vanilla bean frappuccino at 9:00 in the morning. And I would like to give her the benefit of a doubt that this ritual is not a regular occurence--judging from the excited/spastic nature of the child in question and his obvious endearment of his mother. But I like this "ritual," or this tradition, where for one morning the child and his child-like nature is exemplified, nurtured and adored, by allowing space for his natural affinity for soft, fuzzy things and sugary foods.