Now tell her what you said NEXT, Dad!
Hunter has become... How can I put this delicately?
We're in another phase where we're getting, what I can only assume is, a preview of his teenage years. There's been a lot of testing and a lot of mouth. Smart talk, one might say. It's unpleasant and I don't care for it.
It's frustrating, sometimes. Especially, I think, because he's still cute as hell most of the time. Until he turns infuriating.
We were having dinner last night. I don't know why, but The Topic at The Table was replacing Hunter. He was a little concerned, at first, until Dawny reassured him that we wouldn't be able to replace him, even if we wanted to. Which we don't. (Most of the time.)
"But then again," I suggested, "we could always just have him cloned..."
"What does 'cloned' mean?" Hunter asked.
"Well, it means making an exact copy of another living thing." Some discussion of clones and evil opposite clones ensued, until eventually Dawny had the realization that we could duplicate him through magic instead!
She waved her hands in the air and intoned something along the lines of "Alla-bera-zam!"
She and Hunter waited expectantly, to see if this irresponsible experiment with magic was a success or not while I fluttered my arms about. "What the hell, man??!!?? What if that had worked, come on!"
"So what if it had worked?" she asked. "Then we'd have two! He's awesome!"
"He's frustrating as hell!" I protested. "Just earlier we were out for a bike ride. We'd crossed the street and he was struggling to get up the sidewalk ramp on the far side. I'm telling him, 'You've got to pedal more, dude! Come on! When I tell you to peddle, you have to pedal.' And he just looks at me and in this really condescending tone he says, 'Dad, I think what you mean to say is that I have to pedal harder. But it's ok, I understand what you meant.'"
He talks like this.
It's unreal, sometimes.
To have my speech corrected, and not unfairly, by a four-year-old is... an experience.
At this point, Dawny was falling into herself laughing. Because, you know, she wasn't being spoken down to by a four-year-old who thinks he knows everything. He has actually intoned the words, without any sort of prompting, "Well, I'm usually right about everything, but not always."
So Dawny's laughing and my story is told. Or so I thought.
Hunter is enwrapped. And yes, I'm aware that's not the common term, but it fits so well for him that I'm officially coining it. He's completely enwrapped in my tale because if there's anything he loves more than hearing about himself, God himself hasn't discovered it yet. "Now tell her what you said next, Dad!"
At this point my bowels dropped out. Because I have a pretty good idea of what I was thinking next, but I didn't think I'd actually verbalized anything. There was a very good chance he was about to seriously incriminate me! "Well, I don't think I actually said anything next, did I, Bugs?"
"Yes you did, Dad!"
You rotten little...
"You said," and he scrunched up his face and intoned deeply, "'Duuuude...'"
And he laughed and laughed.
And so did I.
Because I hadn't said anything terrible after all.
In other news, I wanted to share this image of MPuzzle and I chilling on a decent, if somewhat disappointing, mid-roof of Pig Nut from last Tuesday. There are tales to tell, but for this all anyone needs to know, if anything, is that we were packing up and I wanted one last shot.
"Go sit over there and let's see how long the camera thinks it needs for a good exposure," I commanded. He complied and I set up the shot. I scurried over explaining, "It's bouncing between 15 and 25 seconds, so we'll see how this actually comes out."
In the end, the camera selected 25 seconds and I think it came out really nice, so I wanted to share it.
So here it is:
I include it here because in the car the next day I was thinking about us sitting perfectly still for 30 seconds and thinking about Hunter who can't sit still for 3. And I realized that I really want to take a similar picture of Hunter and I sitting together where I'm looking at him incredulously through a 20-or-so second exposure while he's just a puddle of spasming four-year-old in a blur next to me.
So look for that sometime in the near-ish future.
We're in another phase where we're getting, what I can only assume is, a preview of his teenage years. There's been a lot of testing and a lot of mouth. Smart talk, one might say. It's unpleasant and I don't care for it.
It's frustrating, sometimes. Especially, I think, because he's still cute as hell most of the time. Until he turns infuriating.
We were having dinner last night. I don't know why, but The Topic at The Table was replacing Hunter. He was a little concerned, at first, until Dawny reassured him that we wouldn't be able to replace him, even if we wanted to. Which we don't. (Most of the time.)
"But then again," I suggested, "we could always just have him cloned..."
"What does 'cloned' mean?" Hunter asked.
"Well, it means making an exact copy of another living thing." Some discussion of clones and evil opposite clones ensued, until eventually Dawny had the realization that we could duplicate him through magic instead!
She waved her hands in the air and intoned something along the lines of "Alla-bera-zam!"
She and Hunter waited expectantly, to see if this irresponsible experiment with magic was a success or not while I fluttered my arms about. "What the hell, man??!!?? What if that had worked, come on!"
"So what if it had worked?" she asked. "Then we'd have two! He's awesome!"
"He's frustrating as hell!" I protested. "Just earlier we were out for a bike ride. We'd crossed the street and he was struggling to get up the sidewalk ramp on the far side. I'm telling him, 'You've got to pedal more, dude! Come on! When I tell you to peddle, you have to pedal.' And he just looks at me and in this really condescending tone he says, 'Dad, I think what you mean to say is that I have to pedal harder. But it's ok, I understand what you meant.'"
He talks like this.
It's unreal, sometimes.
To have my speech corrected, and not unfairly, by a four-year-old is... an experience.
At this point, Dawny was falling into herself laughing. Because, you know, she wasn't being spoken down to by a four-year-old who thinks he knows everything. He has actually intoned the words, without any sort of prompting, "Well, I'm usually right about everything, but not always."
So Dawny's laughing and my story is told. Or so I thought.
Hunter is enwrapped. And yes, I'm aware that's not the common term, but it fits so well for him that I'm officially coining it. He's completely enwrapped in my tale because if there's anything he loves more than hearing about himself, God himself hasn't discovered it yet. "Now tell her what you said next, Dad!"
At this point my bowels dropped out. Because I have a pretty good idea of what I was thinking next, but I didn't think I'd actually verbalized anything. There was a very good chance he was about to seriously incriminate me! "Well, I don't think I actually said anything next, did I, Bugs?"
"Yes you did, Dad!"
You rotten little...
"You said," and he scrunched up his face and intoned deeply, "'Duuuude...'"
And he laughed and laughed.
And so did I.
Because I hadn't said anything terrible after all.
In other news, I wanted to share this image of MPuzzle and I chilling on a decent, if somewhat disappointing, mid-roof of Pig Nut from last Tuesday. There are tales to tell, but for this all anyone needs to know, if anything, is that we were packing up and I wanted one last shot.
"Go sit over there and let's see how long the camera thinks it needs for a good exposure," I commanded. He complied and I set up the shot. I scurried over explaining, "It's bouncing between 15 and 25 seconds, so we'll see how this actually comes out."
In the end, the camera selected 25 seconds and I think it came out really nice, so I wanted to share it.
So here it is:
I include it here because in the car the next day I was thinking about us sitting perfectly still for 30 seconds and thinking about Hunter who can't sit still for 3. And I realized that I really want to take a similar picture of Hunter and I sitting together where I'm looking at him incredulously through a 20-or-so second exposure while he's just a puddle of spasming four-year-old in a blur next to me.
So look for that sometime in the near-ish future.