Dragon Wisdom

Koyle loves How to Train Your Dragon right now. So much. The boys have both been into dragons and that movie for a while but I think watching the movie a few weeks ago really re-sparked Koyles imagination. We have also been reading the books by Cressida Cowell and they just eat them up. I knew Matthew would really enjoy reading them but I had no idea Koyle would attach to them the way he did. He sleeps with the book, carries it around, and reads from it constantly. I have been surprised at how much of the story he has picked up and remembered.
       Ever since Halloween we have been engaged in an ongoing game of How To Train Your Dragon. Koyle is usually Hiccup or Toothless, but he can play any part. I am typically Valka or Fishlegs. Justin is almost always Stoick the Vast (pronounced with an English accent). Matthew and Landon take on whatever other role is needed at the moment. We flow seamlessly from one set of characters to another, between book and movie, (and they are very different) depending on where Koyle's imagination takes us. He wakes up each morning and reminds us, "I'm still Hiccup..." and then tells all of us who we are. He told me the other day that he was going to be Hiccup until we move to a new house. I am okay with this because Koyle is very affectionate and loving towards me when I am part of the game; a nice difference from the stubborn 3 year old who insists that he "doesn't love mom."
      Tonight I got to spend an evening at home with just the two of us. (Landon was here for a while but then went to sleep.) We watched the Dragon movie and let me tell you. If you want some entertainment, just watch that movie with Koyle. Koyle doesn't really watch movies and this is the only one he will even engage with through the entire thing. But Koyle does not sit and watch a movie, he IS the movie. He burned more calories during that movie than I did all day. Let's just say turning on a movie for him does not mean a relaxing break for me. But I don't care. He is adorable and I love watching him play and imagine.
       At the end of each book there is an epilogue written by Hiccup as an adult-because the books are his memoirs that he is writing. But there was a part at the end of the 3rd book that I especially enjoyed. If my boys learn this lesson from these stories, then I will play dragons for as long as it takes.
"And suddenly I realized with such clearness what pinpricks we were on this ocean universe. What swaggering insects! What posturing amoebas!
But size isn't everything, as I am always telling Snotlout. However small we are, we should always fight for what we believe to be right. And I don't mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of our swords. That has always been the problem with us Vikings. I mean the power of our brains and our thoughts and our dreams. 
And as small and quiet and unimportant as our fighting may look, perhaps we might all work together like the numberless armies of Ziggerastica, and break out of the prisons of our own making. Perhaps we might be able to keep this fierce and beautiful world of ours as free for all of us as it seemed to be on that blue afternoon of my childhood...The fight goes on for the Heroes of the Future." (How to Speak Dragonese by Cressida Cowell, p.221-223)