Hats

For some reason I have been reminded of this story twice in the past three days, so I thought I would just share it.

I've always been the favorite toy for several of my friends' kids. It's because I'm the one that teaches them bad things and gives them back. Like when I taught Parker how to shoot straw wrappers and blow bubbles in his drink. I'm always shocked at the things parents don't teach their kids. With Edwin I felt it was my duty, since he was such an insanely brilliant child, to dumb him up a little. I taught him things like how to spin in a circle until you fall down. Except he'd spin a few times, then run over to wherever I was sitting and fall down on top of me.

My favorite lesson came during my halloween visit a few months after his first birthday. He already had a frightening vocabularly, so I went about teaching him to be creative with hit. Since he wasn't picking up the lingo from Stargate SG-1 that I was drilling him on, I tried something different. I finally got it through to him that any object you put on top of your head can be called a hat. It's block, put it on your head, now it's a hat. It's a book, put it on your head, it's a hat. We played that game quite a bit on that visit.

Jump forward a few weeks. It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the day I traditionally take off from work to finish my Christmas shopping. I'm standing in line at the food court in the mall when I get a call from Lauren. She was home with Edwin and had just given him lunch. While he ate his spaghetti in his high chair she washed up the dishes. She could hear him babbling to himself, "Spoon. Fork. Plate. Plate. Plate. Hat." Ooops. I would give anything in the world to have a picture of that moment. I've been proud of corrupting quite a few little people, but that was a shinning moment for me. Man I miss those guys.