Dad Entry #11

After reading a whale book, Michael told me that orcas fight bears. Recall that orcas are killer whales (Michael had to teach me this). Anyway, Michael said orcas win because they are more ‘bitery.’ Phonetically, that’s ‘bite – er – ee’ and, as Michael clarified for me, “It’s like the word bite, Daddy.” He must’ve known his word was not so common. I don’t think he would’ve stopped, furrowed his brow, and felt the need to clarify otherwise. It’s funny; it’s like a feeling-out process with the language. But Michael speaks with authority. He didn’t ask me if ‘bitery’ was a word; he told me what it meant! Come to think of it, he is a know-it-all chatterbox at times. But we’re happy he’s good verbally. He’s expressive and clear; and he’s unafraid to try new words which, at his age, can result in made-up or ‘non-words’ (e.g. ‘bitery’) and mispronounced words (e.g. ‘scupa’ diver). I don’t correct him much yet; I don’t want to squash his creativity. He’ll be challenged and corrected a million times in life – especially if he gets married – so I let things like ‘bitery’ go for now. And obviously I knew what he meant. Orcas have bigger mouths and bigger teeth. The Chicago Bears defense is the toughest thing on earth but bears, as a species, are simply not in the same weight class as orcas. After all, male orcas can weigh-in at over 6 tons. They can eat 500 lbs of food a day. And yes, they will, though rarely, take polar bears as prey. Wow. By the way, did you know that a blue whale’s heart is the size of a car (and it can pump 60 gallons of blood per minute)? Nature is amazing. Michael knows this – that nature is awesome – but I seem to have forgotten momentarily.

Sara and I are going to re-tile our master bath. So I’m ripping out the old tile this week. Michael is ‘helping.’ He mostly pounds nails into the sub-floor, only a little bit so I can just yank them out with my hands. He also pokes around in the little gap between the drywall and the floor, stuff like that. I have to keep my eye on him, though. Not for safety reasons – with hammers, chisels and tile shards laying around, who cares about safety (just kidding DCFS). It’s because I heard, “Look Daddy, I’m working on this thing here.” Michael was referring to the exposed air vent. He’d mangled the aluminum air duct opening. Yikes! I was able to bend the opening back to its previous rectangular shape. Sort of. But in the spirit of not stifling creativity – as above with his uncorrected use of ‘bitery’ – I cringed but commended him on his good craftsmanship. Then I told him to alert Daddy before he undertakes any special projects – like HVAC improvements – and, yes, I told him he can cause damage if he’s not careful, if he does things incorrectly, or if he does things I haven’t okayed first. I’m the foreman, I told him. The contractor. And he’s a laborer. So he has to take orders. And get used to it, I told him. And then I think I mentioned ‘marriage’ again.

My Megan update: she’s cute. The other day she was caring for her baby. She wrapped up her baby, a.k.a. dollie, in a blanket. She held it, rocked it and fed it with a toy bottle. She said "dollie" a few times in her sweet, soft voice. Then she got flustered – because she’s so cute I had to give her and her dollie a hug – so she frowned, whined and twisted away from me. Then she tossed her baby and it crashed headfirst on the hardwood floor. Ouch!