Memory like an elephant

For anyone who thinks two-year-olds have no longer-term memory, I submit several cute kid stories.

1) After church this Sunday on our way out, Benji told me "go eat" and I figured he just wanted to have lunch so I told him we'd go home to get Daddy and then go have lunch. He repeated this again in the parking lot, so I asked him what he wanted to eat. He pronounced that he would like "donut". I thought this a bit odd since we don't have donuts very often. As we got closer to the car I asked him again and he again responded "donut". It finally dawned on me that when we went to church in Ames there were donuts and coffee after Mass. And on one of the Sundays of Advent the church we went to that weekend had donut holes afterwards. Apparently Benji thought this was a new addition to the church routine. Something I had completely forgotten had made quite the impression on him.

2) During "Christmas break" we went to Brookfield Zoo with my family, including my brother. It was a nice trip but because it was chilly we didn't see the whole zoo. We spent a lot of time in Tropic World and of course had to see the elephants and giraffes. When we were visiting in Ames we got to talking about the zoo and I asked Benji what we saw there. He told us he saw "monkeys", which is indeed what most of Tropic World has (monkeys and gorillas, but Benji was calling the gorillas monkeys). I asked him what else he saw and he told me he saw elephants and giraffes. He didn't add in any extra animals and he covered the main ones we saw. To build on this, last week he found his mold-a-rama elephant from the zoo and told me "coins", which indeed is how he got his elephant from the machine. This all makes me very glad we got the zoo membership and can go back a few times this summer.

3) Most days when I get home from work I ask Benji what he did today. And most days I don't get much of a response. I then move on to more specific questions like "did you go to storytime today?" But last week when I asked him he told me he went to the "park". And I asked him what he did at the park and he said "swings". So, the park must have made quite an impression compared to most daily activities.

4) Last weekend we were at Sears looking at washers and dryers and "Finding Nemo" was on the TVs across the room. We told Benji we'd go home and watch the "fish movie" and he seemed pretty excited. So we were taken aback when we got home and he started screaming angrily "fish movie, fish movie!" We think he thought we were going to the movie theater to see the fish movie. We don't go to the movies very often, but he did seem to really like the previous movie we'd seen ("Enchanted"), so I guess he wanted to see Nemo in the theater.

Now of course you can see this is all a selective memory, focusing on things he's particularly enjoyed and things that are out of the ordinary. But it just goes to show that kids are absorbing way more than we think they are.