“I kill dat bunny!”
Ray and I exchanged knowing looks as our 2.5-year-old gleefully spoke of murdering the small rabbit he was chasing through the pine straw in our backyard. We’d seen enough Dexter to expect increasing numbers of neighborhood pets to go missing over the next 5-10 years before our little one began honing his skills on live human prey. At that point, Ray would withdraw from the world for failing as a dad, take up some melancholy, solitary hobby, like whittling or taxidermy, and grow a long, lumberjack beard that would up and turn white overnight from the stress. Meanwhile, I’d continue to put the hard-press on motherhood, cheerfully singing, “I made you pasta with meatballs!” while my son lurched around the house at 16, searching for a place to hide his latest severed head…
Like all parents, we have a reasonably inflated sense of how smart both our sons are—neither one destined for rocket science necessarily…but we still feel their intelligence is advanced enough to inspire a foreboding wariness that the day they out-smart us is coming. The older son is clever in ways that I can relate to—getting excited about rhyming words, memorizing his favorite books, and rattling off multi-syllabic vocabulary. But the younger one, much like his daddy, is smart in a way that I was always entirely too lazy for. He’s propelled not only by a desire to know how things work—but to make things work according to his own design.
At not even 3, we joked that he was our split-personality baby—50% awesome--silly and singing with upside-down raspberries like thimbles on his fingertips--and 50% fight and fury, railing against the injustices of toys that did not cooperate and anyone who dared suggest he do something other than exactly what he wanted to do. This second son had been slower to talk than his brother—but quicker to follow directions, much more observant, and a lot more self-directed. From the benefit of watching his older brother so closely, the younger one got to skip a lot of the exploratory play that happens in that first year. The first time my older son picked up a toy car, he did what every kid his age did—flipped it over and started spinning the wheels. But the first time the second one managed to army-crawl close enough to his brother’s collection, he grabbed that car and jumped right into functional play, rolling it back and forth on the carpet as if he’d been waiting his whole life to do just that. He started engaging in imaginary play a lot sooner than we remembered with his brother, balling up his fist and saying, “Dat my football” before he went on to tackle himself in slow-motion on the living room floor, or coming up to you with a cylindrical-shaped block and offering it up, saying, “Want some nemonade?” (aka: lemonade).
But he also had the alarming tendency to totally FREAK OUT when he was building or constructing things and encountered obstacles like gravity or square-peg-round-hole situations--like he had this beautiful picture in his mind that his little chub-fingers and understanding of basic math and physics were too inept yet to complete. Now, at 2-and-a-half, he was looking at things around our house like he wanted to take it all apart, manipulating the moving parts on the latch of the sliding glass door as if intent on dismembering it. Sometimes, we’d look at how he played and think, engineer. But other times, like this moment in the pine straw, we’d shake our heads and think, serial killer.
Like many kids his age, our second son has an entourage of security items he surrounds himself with at naptime and bedtime, known as “Green Bacon” and the “Lovees”. “Green Bacon” is an adorable approximation of the words “green blanket”, a simplification leftover from a time where /bl/ blends were not yet his thing. He is now totally capable of saying “blanket” correctly, but that particular item will always and forever be considered a “bacon”. The Lovees are a threesome of 12-square-inch fabric swatches, each with its own animal head--a giraffe, a raccoon, and an owl--known affectionately as “G-raff”, “Wakoon”, and “Owoe-Hoo-Hoo”, respectively. G-raff has long been the leader of the crew and my son’s hands-down favorite. Given life or death and a choice between Mommy or G-raff, there would be more than a moment’s hesitation—which is saying a lot for a boy who follows me to the bathroom rather than be without me for 5 minutes. Owoe-Hoo-Hoo appears to be second in command, with the lowly Wakoon a distant and forgotten third. He rounds out the trio—which is important for our sweet OCD baby--but Wakoon seems to have no real place in my son’s heart on his own. This was, at least, the assumed hierarchy from what Ray and I had observed…until one day, his Number 2--Mr. Hoo-Hoo--went missing.
At first, we thought nothing of his disappearance. My days are a series of predictable routines, punctuated by intermittent demands from my kids regarding where something of importance is, only to discover it’s exactly where Mommy. Always. Puts it. If my son asks, for instance, “Where Owoe-Hoo-Hoo?”, it’s always one of 3 places: his bed, the living room couch, or the couch in the bonus room. So imagine my surprise at bedtime, when I furiously stomped around to all the usual places and turned up nothing… When a deeper search behind, under, and inside of things was equally unfruitful, I was sure my younger son would refuse to sleep, lying awake in his bed as a testimony of his grief… But for some reason…he was cool with it. My other son, sympathetic to his brother’s loss, offered to let him sleep with Froggy, one of his own treasured Lovees, until Owoe-Hoo-Hoo was found. The younger son happily accepted…but was otherwise unperturbed by the situation. When asked directly if he knew where Owoe-Hoo-Hoo might be, my son simply shrugged, saying, “Owoe-Hoo-Hoo gone,” and fell asleep soundly as if nothing were different.
Later that night, Ray and I sat on the couch discussing Owoe’s possible whereabouts over our nightly regimen of background TV. Where could he be? Did one of us accidentally throw him out? And why wasn’t our son more worried? For a boy who throws epic fits over much less, his behavior seemed odd… Had there been a falling out with Hoo-Hoo? Some fall-from-grace for the second in command? Had our son somehow…done away with him…and tossed his remains in a passing garbage truck? Would we one day go to pull an old suitcase from the crawl space and find Hoo-Hoo hanging from a rafter or shoved into a stack of Tonka Truck tires with his face gnawed off? We laughed…however nervously…at the ridiculousness of our insinuation that the 2.5-year-old was a miniature psycho in our midst. But then again…sometimes, he would get that look in his eye…the one that kinda conjured the image of King Joffrey from Game of Thrones…
Fortunately for all of us, our AWOL little Owoe did finally surface. As it turns out, Mommy had just fallen off the wagon with her housekeeping again and Hoo-Hoo had been hiding on the futon in the master bedroom under a balled-up cardigan. The fears regarding our son’s macabre master plan for the backyard bunny instantly dissolved in much the same way. As I stood in the pine straw, imagining my interview with the local news, sobbing “He was always such a good boy…” while forensics crews were actively uncovering a collection of human carcasses behind me--I heard him say it again…
“I keeyo him!”
And I finally heard it for what it was. You see, the 2.5-year-old still drops the /s/ from consonant blends: “poon” is a “spoon”, “nake” is a “snake”—so “keeyo” was actually “skeeyo”. That craziness going on at the end of the word is a common toddler’s distortion of vocalic /r/: the “er” in “water” becomes “oh” (ex: watoh), the “ar” in “car” becomes “aw” (ex: caw)—and the “air” in “care”? Becomes “eeyo” (ex: keeyo). Put it all together...and…
“Scare…SCARE!” I blurted out gleefully. “I scare him…he said, 'I scare that bunny!'”
Ray and I wiped our brows in relief and stopped silently generating future alibis our son could one day use to avoid being implicated in his brutal crimes… He doesn’t want to kill the bunny. Just scare him, chase him away. I launched into speech therapist mode and modeled the word again and again, exaggerating the /s/ sound in “scare” while sliding my finger down my forearm as a visual cue. My son rolled his eyes like a much older child as he often does when he thinks we’re full of sh*&, as if to protest, “That’s what I SAID, Mama…”, then scampered playfully after the bunny with a big smile on his face. Because the truth is, he loves animals. He does frequently ask permission to squish bugs (“I kwish that bug?”) and he may eventually keeyo someone for moving his Mack truck from Cars:The Movie a quarter-inch out of place during one of his reenactments—but animals? Loves them. In fact, as a second thought to this entire dark tangent, neighborhood pets are probably safe, regardless.
And besides. He is a good boy. He cries when he doesn’t get a chance give Daddy “wet kisses” before he leaves for work in the mornings. He immediately puts his arm around big brother when we pick him up from preschool because he’s missed him so much. And he undoubtedly loves the hell outta Mommy, looking at me with a quivering bottom lip when I talk about ducking out for a 30-minute haircut, saying, “But I love you…don’t leave me, Mommy”.
He also makes me crazy, holding me hostage to his whims when getting in or out of the car, engaging in regular stand-offs regarding so much as even sitting on the potty, and angrily demanding “privacy” (the actual term he uses), so that he can aggravate the sh*& out of whatever hinge, light switch, or faucet has caught his interest. He’s an amazing little guy, who’s completely awesome at least 50% of the time—and it’s entirely possible that 50% that drives us nuts as parents is exactly the stuff he needs to be strong, independent, and successful in life. Let's hope--for now, anyway--and cross the bridge on that other theory somewhere down the line.
In the meantime, we’ll watch out for mysterious Lovee disappearances…and occasionally check the pine straw for bodies.
Ray and I exchanged knowing looks as our 2.5-year-old gleefully spoke of murdering the small rabbit he was chasing through the pine straw in our backyard. We’d seen enough Dexter to expect increasing numbers of neighborhood pets to go missing over the next 5-10 years before our little one began honing his skills on live human prey. At that point, Ray would withdraw from the world for failing as a dad, take up some melancholy, solitary hobby, like whittling or taxidermy, and grow a long, lumberjack beard that would up and turn white overnight from the stress. Meanwhile, I’d continue to put the hard-press on motherhood, cheerfully singing, “I made you pasta with meatballs!” while my son lurched around the house at 16, searching for a place to hide his latest severed head…
Like all parents, we have a reasonably inflated sense of how smart both our sons are—neither one destined for rocket science necessarily…but we still feel their intelligence is advanced enough to inspire a foreboding wariness that the day they out-smart us is coming. The older son is clever in ways that I can relate to—getting excited about rhyming words, memorizing his favorite books, and rattling off multi-syllabic vocabulary. But the younger one, much like his daddy, is smart in a way that I was always entirely too lazy for. He’s propelled not only by a desire to know how things work—but to make things work according to his own design.
At not even 3, we joked that he was our split-personality baby—50% awesome--silly and singing with upside-down raspberries like thimbles on his fingertips--and 50% fight and fury, railing against the injustices of toys that did not cooperate and anyone who dared suggest he do something other than exactly what he wanted to do. This second son had been slower to talk than his brother—but quicker to follow directions, much more observant, and a lot more self-directed. From the benefit of watching his older brother so closely, the younger one got to skip a lot of the exploratory play that happens in that first year. The first time my older son picked up a toy car, he did what every kid his age did—flipped it over and started spinning the wheels. But the first time the second one managed to army-crawl close enough to his brother’s collection, he grabbed that car and jumped right into functional play, rolling it back and forth on the carpet as if he’d been waiting his whole life to do just that. He started engaging in imaginary play a lot sooner than we remembered with his brother, balling up his fist and saying, “Dat my football” before he went on to tackle himself in slow-motion on the living room floor, or coming up to you with a cylindrical-shaped block and offering it up, saying, “Want some nemonade?” (aka: lemonade).
But he also had the alarming tendency to totally FREAK OUT when he was building or constructing things and encountered obstacles like gravity or square-peg-round-hole situations--like he had this beautiful picture in his mind that his little chub-fingers and understanding of basic math and physics were too inept yet to complete. Now, at 2-and-a-half, he was looking at things around our house like he wanted to take it all apart, manipulating the moving parts on the latch of the sliding glass door as if intent on dismembering it. Sometimes, we’d look at how he played and think, engineer. But other times, like this moment in the pine straw, we’d shake our heads and think, serial killer.
Like many kids his age, our second son has an entourage of security items he surrounds himself with at naptime and bedtime, known as “Green Bacon” and the “Lovees”. “Green Bacon” is an adorable approximation of the words “green blanket”, a simplification leftover from a time where /bl/ blends were not yet his thing. He is now totally capable of saying “blanket” correctly, but that particular item will always and forever be considered a “bacon”. The Lovees are a threesome of 12-square-inch fabric swatches, each with its own animal head--a giraffe, a raccoon, and an owl--known affectionately as “G-raff”, “Wakoon”, and “Owoe-Hoo-Hoo”, respectively. G-raff has long been the leader of the crew and my son’s hands-down favorite. Given life or death and a choice between Mommy or G-raff, there would be more than a moment’s hesitation—which is saying a lot for a boy who follows me to the bathroom rather than be without me for 5 minutes. Owoe-Hoo-Hoo appears to be second in command, with the lowly Wakoon a distant and forgotten third. He rounds out the trio—which is important for our sweet OCD baby--but Wakoon seems to have no real place in my son’s heart on his own. This was, at least, the assumed hierarchy from what Ray and I had observed…until one day, his Number 2--Mr. Hoo-Hoo--went missing.
At first, we thought nothing of his disappearance. My days are a series of predictable routines, punctuated by intermittent demands from my kids regarding where something of importance is, only to discover it’s exactly where Mommy. Always. Puts it. If my son asks, for instance, “Where Owoe-Hoo-Hoo?”, it’s always one of 3 places: his bed, the living room couch, or the couch in the bonus room. So imagine my surprise at bedtime, when I furiously stomped around to all the usual places and turned up nothing… When a deeper search behind, under, and inside of things was equally unfruitful, I was sure my younger son would refuse to sleep, lying awake in his bed as a testimony of his grief… But for some reason…he was cool with it. My other son, sympathetic to his brother’s loss, offered to let him sleep with Froggy, one of his own treasured Lovees, until Owoe-Hoo-Hoo was found. The younger son happily accepted…but was otherwise unperturbed by the situation. When asked directly if he knew where Owoe-Hoo-Hoo might be, my son simply shrugged, saying, “Owoe-Hoo-Hoo gone,” and fell asleep soundly as if nothing were different.
Later that night, Ray and I sat on the couch discussing Owoe’s possible whereabouts over our nightly regimen of background TV. Where could he be? Did one of us accidentally throw him out? And why wasn’t our son more worried? For a boy who throws epic fits over much less, his behavior seemed odd… Had there been a falling out with Hoo-Hoo? Some fall-from-grace for the second in command? Had our son somehow…done away with him…and tossed his remains in a passing garbage truck? Would we one day go to pull an old suitcase from the crawl space and find Hoo-Hoo hanging from a rafter or shoved into a stack of Tonka Truck tires with his face gnawed off? We laughed…however nervously…at the ridiculousness of our insinuation that the 2.5-year-old was a miniature psycho in our midst. But then again…sometimes, he would get that look in his eye…the one that kinda conjured the image of King Joffrey from Game of Thrones…
Fortunately for all of us, our AWOL little Owoe did finally surface. As it turns out, Mommy had just fallen off the wagon with her housekeeping again and Hoo-Hoo had been hiding on the futon in the master bedroom under a balled-up cardigan. The fears regarding our son’s macabre master plan for the backyard bunny instantly dissolved in much the same way. As I stood in the pine straw, imagining my interview with the local news, sobbing “He was always such a good boy…” while forensics crews were actively uncovering a collection of human carcasses behind me--I heard him say it again…
“I keeyo him!”
And I finally heard it for what it was. You see, the 2.5-year-old still drops the /s/ from consonant blends: “poon” is a “spoon”, “nake” is a “snake”—so “keeyo” was actually “skeeyo”. That craziness going on at the end of the word is a common toddler’s distortion of vocalic /r/: the “er” in “water” becomes “oh” (ex: watoh), the “ar” in “car” becomes “aw” (ex: caw)—and the “air” in “care”? Becomes “eeyo” (ex: keeyo). Put it all together...and…
“Scare…SCARE!” I blurted out gleefully. “I scare him…he said, 'I scare that bunny!'”
Ray and I wiped our brows in relief and stopped silently generating future alibis our son could one day use to avoid being implicated in his brutal crimes… He doesn’t want to kill the bunny. Just scare him, chase him away. I launched into speech therapist mode and modeled the word again and again, exaggerating the /s/ sound in “scare” while sliding my finger down my forearm as a visual cue. My son rolled his eyes like a much older child as he often does when he thinks we’re full of sh*&, as if to protest, “That’s what I SAID, Mama…”, then scampered playfully after the bunny with a big smile on his face. Because the truth is, he loves animals. He does frequently ask permission to squish bugs (“I kwish that bug?”) and he may eventually keeyo someone for moving his Mack truck from Cars:The Movie a quarter-inch out of place during one of his reenactments—but animals? Loves them. In fact, as a second thought to this entire dark tangent, neighborhood pets are probably safe, regardless.
And besides. He is a good boy. He cries when he doesn’t get a chance give Daddy “wet kisses” before he leaves for work in the mornings. He immediately puts his arm around big brother when we pick him up from preschool because he’s missed him so much. And he undoubtedly loves the hell outta Mommy, looking at me with a quivering bottom lip when I talk about ducking out for a 30-minute haircut, saying, “But I love you…don’t leave me, Mommy”.
He also makes me crazy, holding me hostage to his whims when getting in or out of the car, engaging in regular stand-offs regarding so much as even sitting on the potty, and angrily demanding “privacy” (the actual term he uses), so that he can aggravate the sh*& out of whatever hinge, light switch, or faucet has caught his interest. He’s an amazing little guy, who’s completely awesome at least 50% of the time—and it’s entirely possible that 50% that drives us nuts as parents is exactly the stuff he needs to be strong, independent, and successful in life. Let's hope--for now, anyway--and cross the bridge on that other theory somewhere down the line.
In the meantime, we’ll watch out for mysterious Lovee disappearances…and occasionally check the pine straw for bodies.
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