76 : Walks & Ideas

“Rawr! … RAWR! RAWR!”

I opened my eyes to the very intense black-eyed gaze of my almost three-year old, practically sitting on my neck at a still-early hour of the morning. Like having a pocket monster.

“Hi, bud…”

“RAWR! RAWR!”

Then he did sit on my neck.

It was another speech evaluation morning for Yali. Some day the appointments and evaluations will taper, but no time soon.

At ten o’clock, the boys and I found ourselves once again at the school district’s early childhood development center for two more evaluations that managed to be completed in under an hour.

Puck killed that time by examining the children’s book corner in the waiting room, listening for signs of Yali reemerging.

“Oh, I hear Yali. Yup, that’s my Yali.”

We stopped at the store on the way home, mostly for a pair of khakis for Puck. While he tried them on in the dressing room, Yali kept standing on the footstool and jumping off of it.

“Yali, cut that out!” Puck ordered after awhile.

That’s all it took. One scolding from Puck and it might as well be Armageddon. Yali allowed the moaning of humiliation to commence. Although Puck and I both agreed that he sounds more like a sick whale than anything.

There was still time in the day for two walks around the neighborhood. The first one, we baked. The second, way cooler. The sun was tucked in with dark blue clouds now, spitting rain at us as we rounded the corner. Thunder rumbled as we walked up the driveway and about an hour later with dinner in the oven, the rain really fell.

During dinner, Puck was completely inspired after chatting with Oxbear on the phone. They had plans to write a computer game together. Soon, the entire kitchen whiteboard was covered with story synopses and bullet-point checklists, including ideas such as: “Alian envaishon”, “trampalene of death”, “earth qwaik”, and “Evil cake”.

Meanwhile, Yali was busy making all his chicken pieces “moo”, “oink”, and “baaa” at me.