Since he was old enough to say, "Please," Joshua's been asking to watch Doctor Who. Over the past two weeks, he's taken to acting out the show with vaguely police-box-shaped objects. We've laughed at him pretending an empty Pop Tarts box or container of baby powder is the TARDIS. He likes to hold it up to our window AC unit--apparently the cold air is the time vortex--and make noises he associated with the show, like screaming, pretending the TARDIS is crashing, and saying, "Doctor, wait!"
Today, we reached new heights.
During a visit to Barnes and Noble, we saw a display of Doctor Who collectibles. T-Shirts, sonic screwdrivers, replicas of the TARDIS, the works. Joshua ran up to them, excited, and started saying "Doctor Who!" over and over. He found a soft, toddler-friendly TARDIS and played with it for a while, until we tried to distract him by taking him across the store to the children's book section. He turned around several times and asked for Doctor Who, but we persevered.
Finally, we got to the enormous selection of children's books, with bright colors, toys, and everything a toddler would want.
Joshua immediately booked it in the opposite direction, doing his best to retrace our steps back to the Doctor Who display. We tried to distract him with a book from another TV show he loves, Dinosaur Train; he even has its theme song memorized. But after about 13 seconds, he ran off again--"Doctor Who!" A globe managed to hold his attention for another 20 seconds.
He led us around the store for about ten minutes, searching desperately for the display, and we continued to hope he would forget about it. The depth of his feelings soon surpassed his vocabulary, so he pulled out a word I'd never heard him use before: favorite. "Where is Doctor Who? It's my favorite. Doctor Who? Where are you?"
Finally, he made it to his best guess of where the display should be, maybe twenty feet from where it really was. He ran around in circles for several minutes, calling out for Doctor Who and saying it was his favorite. We took pity on him and led him to the display.
"Doctor Who!" In his excitement, he used another new word: "Perfect!"
He played by the display for another five or ten minutes before the adults got bored. We decided that two new words and staying focused on one thing for 15 minutes was pretty impressive for a two-year-old, and we bought him the soft TARDIS toy.
He hasn't spent more than five minutes without it since.
