Amber Eyes

Quite some time ago, Jake declared green as his favorite color.  He gets all the green sippy cups.  And the green toothbrush.  And green trail shoes.  And he thinks he likes green apples.  Meanwhile, Nate has been… let’s just say, unable, to express his color preferences until just recently.  By default he’s been stuck with the blue or pink sippy cups.  The blue toothbrush.  The blue trail shoes.  And the blue striped swim towel.

Well, a couple of weeks ago Jacob comes home from school and says to me, “You know what they said to me at school today that was so mean?”

“Who?”

“My teachers.”

“What’d they say?”

“They said my eyes are brown.”

Uh oh.  He is insistent about green.  And my eyes are green and so he has a deeply held belief that his eyes are green.  Which they can be.  Technically I’d say his eyes are hazel.  A greeny-hazel.  So we had a talk about the beautiful complexities of hazel.

Nate seems to be much further ahead on the color identification track than his brother was at this age.  But he’s still experimenting with his favorite.  He always starts with yellow, and then tells me his favorite color is orange.

Yesterday we’re laying on the couch talking and I ask him, “What color are your eyes?”

“Lellow.”

“Yellow?  Are you sure?”

“No, orange.”

“You have orange eyes?”

“Yesh.”

Maybe in just the right light?…