a 4yr old train of thought

The drive to Aidan's school is about 4 minutes but let me share our morning conversation.
As I'm putting Asher in his car seat, Aidan is talking about things he might do at school today(play, paint, talk about more Z things) but as I was backing out the driveway he asked me why Namaw got on stage. I wasn't sure what he was referring to so I asked a few questions...did he mean on stage at church?-no. On a pretend stage when they were playing?-no. Then he gives me a few details, the outside stage where the people were making baskets. This might not ring a bell for you but I realized he was talking about last year's summer vacation to Charleston during which we visited a plantation. There were ladies making baskets and we attended an outdoor presentation about the native language called gullah. During this presentation the speaker asked for volunteers to join her in a gullah song and Namaw got to go on the stage and sing and dance(I'll try to find those pictures and post one!) Now, back to our conversation...Aidan told me he didn't want to get on stage with Namaw because he was afraid but I reminded him that he was younger then. To which he replied, " No, I was 4 then and I'm 4 now!" I had to back up and tell him he had just turned 4 and now he was almost 5.
Then the conversation changed to the discussion of how long until he turned 5. Aidan knows the names of the months of the year and days of the week but the whole concept of "a month away" doesn't mean much so I told him his birthday is after school gets out, swimming lessons, and Bible school. He still thought it was too long to wait but then started to name everyone he wanted to invite to his party. He got to about the 10th person and decided he'd just invite the whole school, but not the big kids. Then he asks me if big kids smoke cigars. I can thank Derek for this one because he and a friend smoked cigars several weeks ago and Aidan saw them. So I told Aidan that the big kids at his school don't smoke cigars because you have to be older, like a daddy. He then told me he might be a daddy one day and smoke cigars. I took this opportunity to talk about how yucky the cigars smelled and that they probably taste very bad. I also reminded him that he didn't like being around daddy when he was smoking a cigar. He agreed. Score one for momma.
By this time we were pulling into the school and the conversation shifted to Aidan wondering he would get to play on the big kid playground next year.

I can only imagine what we would have talked about if the ride was longer!