J.P. rolled over in bed and bumped his knee on the wall. When he opened his eyes, he was blinded by a face full of sunlight. He glared as he tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. But he accidentally poked himself instead. He rolled out of bed, lost his balance, and landed on his sore knee.
He growled. J.P. was having a bad morning and wasn’t a little boy anymore. He was a grumpy, snarling, mean, old dinosaur.
At breakfast, his mama tried to feed him oatmeal. J.P. made yucky faces and pushed the bowl away. He didn’t want oatmeal. He wanted chocolate chip pancakes with extra butter and syrup. “I’m a dinosaur, Mama. And dinosaurs do NOT eat oatmeal!”
“They don’t?” Mama asked. “It’s a good thing it isn’t oatmeal then, silly dinosaur. That’s a bowl of gooey sticky meat mash. All dinosaurs start their day with a bowl for breakfast.”
J.P. took the bowl and stared at the gooey stuff inside of it. He thought it might be a trick, it looked an awful lot like oatmeal. But if dinosaurs ate it every morning then he would too. He scooped up a spoonful and sniffed at it -- didn’t smell too bad. Then scrunched his eyes shut and licked a bit off. He opened his eyes in surprise. It was actually good! He gobbled down the rest in the bowl.
After breakfast, Mama wanted to cheer him up so she brought out his paints and paper. J.P. loved painting. But he was still grumpy, and instead of smiling, he made sure to frown.
Mama squirted some of each color onto a paper plate, but when she tried to hand him a paint brush, he pushed it away. He didn’t want to paint nicely. “Dinosaurs do NOT use paintbrushes!”
“They don’t?” Mama asked. “Well then what do they use?”
J.P. scooped up a glob of red paint with one hand and a glob of blue in the other then smeared them all over the paper. “Dinosaurs use their claws.” He was a multicolor dinosaur covered in paint splatters by the time his masterpiece was finished.
After J.P. washed his hands and changed his clothes, Mama suggested he play with his toys. He didn’t want to play with his toys, he wanted to go outside. “Dinosaurs do NOT play with toys!”
“They don’t?” Mama asked. “Well then what do they do with them?”
“They STOMP all over them.” J.P. roared and stomped all over his trucks. He growled and kicked his blocks around the room. He bellowed and then chomped onto a stuffed bear, shook it in his mouth, and dropped it in a heap at his feet. J.P. prowled around his room grumbling and looking for something else to demolish.
When J.P. finished messing up his room, he asked Mama if he could go outside. “First you have to clean up this mess, and then you can go outside,” Mama said.
J.P. crossed his arms over his chest and glared. He didn’t want to clean his room, it was a mess. “Dinosaurs do NOT clean rooms.”
“They don’t?” Mama asked. “Then I know a grumpy dinosaur in desperate need of a time out.”
J.P. scowled at his room. “Dinosaurs don’t care about time outs.” Then he smiled and started picking up his room. “But boys do.”
