DJ Electric Daddy

The Sprite and I have a set ritual we follow every evening. We have had this ritual for many months, in fact pretty much since he was born. It has always been my duty to get him ready for bed and put him down to sleep. I always looked at this as my treat, my special time with him, even if it did mean missing more than a fair share of hockey, or episodes of LOST. As The Sprite has gotten older, Les Rituale has gotten more elaborate and takes an increasing amount of time. When he was an infant, a quick scrub of the gums, a change of diaper and short rock in my arms would be all that was necessary to get him down to sleep. There were occasions of course where the rocking in my arms would be lengthy and it may have taken several trips into his bedroom to settle him down. But as we got into teething (and eventually a full set of chompers), and as he started to find his voice, and as he discovered books at bedtime, and realized the delaying properties a book at bedtime possessed, the number ...

The past few weeks have seen The Sprite's vocabulary increase at an impressive rate. He is stringing small sentences together, he's somewhat comprehendible and working the word 'actually' into almost every phrase. "Shall we wear the red t-shirt today?" "Yes, red t-shirt, uh, it's actually green" "No, it's red. It'd your red shirt with the drums on" "No it's not drums, it's actually green" "Okay sunshine whatever you say, green it is" "No, it's not sunshine, sunshine is actually outside" "Alright, now you're just being a smart-arse" "It's not smart-arse daddy. Thats not a good example of the language one should use in front of a toddler. A better example would be smart-alec. Actually" As you can see from the accurately recreated discussion with The Sprite from this evening, he is also becoming quite contrary. We say black, he says white. Or green. It is usually...