the life so short, the crafts so long to learn

Another day. Another week. Another Hour.

And then wild surprise. Time spent with a toddler is rarely ever boring, that’s for sure.

The best part of life with a toddler might be watching that tot ripen seemingly right before your eyes. I swear I come home to a different Benjamin each day of the week. His comprehension, his vocabulary, his annunciation, his throwing-arm. . . everything. Golly, if you and I continued to mature at that rate, we’d probably do pretty well on Jeopardy. We’d also have a lot more hair growing out of our ears.


It was only a week or two ago that I struggled with Ben to get him to say simple things like, “baseball”, “basketball”, ”deoxyribonucleic acid”, and “swimsuit edition.” Now he’s reciting Chaucer.

Ben: “Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote. The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.”

Dad: [long pause and confused look on his face] “Huh? Just eat your vegetables, smart-ass.”


And it isn’t enough that he can say all kinds of great new words. No - now he actually knows how to use them. Now that Mommy and Daddy (whom Ben will sometimes call ‘Mike’) can actually understand the words that are coming out of his mouth, it’s a lot harder to play dumb and ignore his wishes. If Ben wants to watch Blue’s Clues, instead of fumbling out the words, “coos boos”, he can more accurately tell you what television program he would like to watch (again and again and again). And that makes it a lot harder for Daddy to say, “Coos boos? What did you say? Baseball? You want to watch baseball?”

That tactic apparently doesn’t make Ben very happy. I came home yesterday from work and found that he had set a parental-lock on all my favorite sports channels.


A dear friend of ours, a dear friend who has a toddler herself, also saw this extreme acceleration in her son’s mental capabilities during the month or two before his second birthday. I think she’s just trying to make us feel better; her son’s vocabulary and reasoning is to every other toddler’s speech capabilities as Immanuel Kant is to Jessica Simpson.

As it stands, Ben is now the most well-versed male in he family. He just started grammar-checking this blog entry and, wait – nope, he stopped after the first paragraph, threw up his arms and wondered aloud whether or not I am even trying.

Kids these days.