As part of my ongoing efforts to get my pedophobia under control, I've been trying to spend more time with our neighbors across the street and their 2+ year old son. We met them just over 2 years ago when he was still an infant, and while some would say that watching him develop over the ensuing time is a special joy, I'm just glad I can say that I still speak with them and haven't tried to kill myself or anyone else after seeing the little guy. I am becoming more comfortable around him, probably because he's still young enough that he doesn't care a hill of beans about me and is content to live in his own little world.

But I have been getting some entertainment out of him. Especially as he is learning to talk.

I'm talking about more than the typical (or so I'm told) language development process where he learns some words with others that don't go together (his mother is "Mommy", his father is "Mommy Daddy" and my wife is "Mommy Daddy Anna" to him). No, I'm enjoying the fact that he's still getting his head around how to pronounce some words, or even letters. "Please" still comes out as "mease", and I can't even begin to describe the sound he makes when he's talking about crickets. But the best part for me has been the letters "W" and "F".

And it's not that he can't get them right. He can. Some of the time. "Wow" comes out as "Fow" more often than not. But it's not uncommon for him to be looking in his bucket of crickets and worms and snails (all sleeping, of course), and utter "Wow. Fow." in the same breath.

But I missed the best one of all, and I would give anything if I could find a way to download my wife's memory of this into my own brain so I could see it first hand. He has some toy dinosaurs (small enough to fit in his hands, not in his mouth) that he plays with on the driveway. He organizes them into like groups, puts them into lines, and takes them for walks. And he tells the air what the dinosaurs are doing at any given moment. One afternoon while my wife was over for a visit, he was getting the dinosaurs ready for their walk. He picked up two dinos and started walking them along the concrete, saying "Walk. Fauk. Walk. Fauk." under his breath the whole time. It took a moment for the words to sink in with the two ladies (say the phrase over and over out loud in baby voice and you'll see what I mean) and they started looking around to make sure no one else was in earshot. His mother quickly came to her defense, saying that she doesn't use words like that around him, so he didn't pick it up from her.

But that wasn't the best part. This is why I wish I had been present, even though I probably would have died from lack of oxygen from laughing so hard. You see, he picked up two of the dinosaurs and started banging them together in front of him, and he lost the use of the "W" at the same time. So while he's banging the toys together, he's saying "Fauk. Fauk. Fauk. Fauk. Fauk."

I can't wait to teach him how to say "Fuddruckers."