“Oooo, cool Dada! Look it!” declared my four year old as we organized fishing gear on the tailgate. “Oh yeah?” I asked, half listening. “Yeah. Do you keep your Hot Wheels in here?” It was a non-sequiter even by his standards. I looked up from my streamer box and found him wrist deep in the, Read More
The new neighbors are a noisy bunch. They’ve been raising hell every morning for weeks now. I put the neighborhood watch on the case. “There’s um, Dada there’s three now. I know because’n I heard a quieter one from way over… um over there and it had a different pattern,” reports my four, Read More
“Dada, Dada did you get a elk?” called my four year old from the front door as I slid from the pickup into the icy, floodlit driveway. I used to greet my Dad in much the same way, I realized, when he returned from a business trip, hoping he’d brought me a toy or, Read More
“Dada, Dada look!” exclaimed my four year old. “The buck deer, um… with the pointy antlers… he’s smelling the girl deer’s BUTT! Ewwww… silly deer.” “Yeah, they’ll do that sometimes,” I said, hoping my indifference would stop the inevitable line of questioning in its tracks. “Why’s he do that?” he asked, undeterred. “Well… uh… you, Read More
Ping… Whack… THUNK. “Whoa, hey! No throwing rocks at the house!” I yelled to my four year old through the suddenly vulnerable window. “I’m NOT Dada!” he shot back with an eye-roll that would make a fourteen year old proud. WHAP. “Dude! What was that?” “I’m throwing rocks at the SPIDER!” he explained, exasperated, Read More
“Is the otter awake Dada?” asked my four year old, sleepy eyed and soft as he strolled onto the little sand beach. He’d silently navigated fifty yards of forest between the tent and me, and materialized at the tree line as casual and unaffected as he would have in our kitchen back home. “Good, Read More
“Hey Dada look, a exoskeleton!” said my four year old, thigh deep in the river, pointing to a stonefly husk on a midstream boulder. “Seriously?” I asked, incredulous. “Of course, it’s from the molting, cause see,” he continued quite conversationally. “Did you actually just drop exoskeleton… and molting in casual conversation? Who’s kid are, Read More
My four-year-old son has a lot to learn. Teamwork, self reliance, judgment and decision making, risk management, delayed gratification, initiative, critical thinking, loyalty, faith… the list of skills that’ll he need to make his way in the world goes on and on. It’s an overwhelming educational endeavor, before you even consider all the straight-up, Read More
We were a couple hours into a five day river trip when the current grabbed his rod and pulled under. I looked behind the boat just in time to see it sink to the bottom. There would be no recovery.
“Whoa ho ho! Dada did you see that one?” asked my four year old, going rigid for an instant with surprise and excitement. “We just missed him!” I replied. “Yeah cause that was a nibble and I felt the nibble and he wanted our bug real bad.” He was right about the desire, but, Read More