I love my daddy because ...

He reads to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah ... whatever ...

I love my daddy because ...

HE MAKES TRAIN TABLES WHILE I'M AT THE GROCERY STORE WITH MAMA!!!!!!!!!

Add to that the recent father/son lesson on HOW TO CATCH A (gold)FISH (with a Disney rod & reel):

I cannot even hope to ever compete with that kind of handyman/sportsman ability. And so instead, I'm just teaching him how to spell, remember author's names, and read music. He's doing well, by the way. He can tell you the author of any book that we own ... I'm not even kidding. We just started, kind of as a joke, saying the title and author of each book before we read it, and then one day we discovered that he could, on command, tell us the names of all the author/illustrators of what's gotta be at least 50 books. Like, for example, if you say, The Very Hungry Caterpillar he'll immediately say "by Eric Carle." Yeah, I know. It's totally MENSA material.

Now the spelling I can't actually take credit for, because clearly it's from watching our ONE video of Blue's Clues. For those of you who don't know, the host of that show is named STEVE, and he wears his name on the back of his shirt and he spells it before he starts searching for the clues.

Coincidentally, B's boss is also named "Steve," so the other day as we drove by his house, I heard this from the backseat:

"Steve's house. Steve. S-T-E-V-E. Steve."

And then on another day I said something about a balloon that goes "POP" and he said:

"POP! Pop starts with 'P'!"

Coincidentally, I had overheard Steve telling Blue that same thing on the video earlier that morning. Not that The Goose ever watches videos. It's me who likes Blues Clues. I watch it when he's napping.

And so then tonight as we were reading Guess How Much I Love You (by Sam McBratney, illustrations by Anita Jeram), we got to the part where Little Nutbrown Hare is hop hop hopping around and he said:

"Hop! Hop starts with 'P'!"

Naturally I launched into an explanation of initial, medial, and final sounds and a little primer on rhyming. To which he replied:

"No do a big jump on the top."

This is a reference to the fact that he is not allowed to "do a big jump" except at the BOTTOM of the stairs. PEOPLE: He is totally getting that "hop" and "jump" are synonyms.

I cannot get enough of it. I mean, granted, there are times in the car when I am just like, "Turn on the Laurie Berkner so he will stop talking." But most of the time it is completely fascinating.

And the singing. Oh the sweet music to my ears. My mother swears that I sang in the crib as an infant, and after that I sorta kept on a path of musical inclination (which, by the way, has NO earning potential) so I will not be at all disappointed if he decides to, oh say, be in the band instead of playing such an awful contact sport as football.

Anyway, he got this Little Book of Songs for Christmas (no author) and last night we sat down and for 30 minutes ... 30 minutes y'all -- do you understand how long that is in the mind of a toddler? ... flipped through the pages and sang the songs. After the first sightreading he said, "Do again," and so I did, of course. And by the way, during this time, The Dad was upstairs taking a nap. Not that it matters in the least. But this second time as I read it, he'd say the titles of the songs before I even had time to start singing. He was remembering it all after only one read through. He even remembered the ones that I had passed over, saying, "I don't know that one." He'd say, "Not know this one" and turn the page. Then he'd find the picture of the man sitting under a tree and say, "Sing it Mama. John Jacob." As in John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. It's not like a man sitting under a tree gives any clue about JJJS, but still he remembered.

Sponge.

It's a good thing that I do not like to brag or go on and on about my kid because I think I could really get carried away and annoy some people.