Naughty Bacuums

Cinco de Mayo, and one of the three triple birthdays of the year — Aunt Tuuli, Lace Hobcoggin, and Ben-Hur.
While Collette was working with Puck on his reading cards over breakfast, they came across the word “girl”.
“Daduu, girl,” Puck said seriously, pointing to OLeif. “Daduu, girl.”
When Collette explained that his dad was not a girl, Puck altered his analysis.
“Daduu, bird. Daduu, bird.”
Later, while Puck was busy with his vacuums, he was finding them very frustrating. They were not cooperating with his plans.
“Naughty bacuums!” he cried. “Naughty bacuums!”
He then parked both of them in the corner, then walked over to Collette and thumped his folded arms on the couch with a sigh, waiting until they could behave themselves.
Shortly later, he decided to give them a second chance. He dropped a pillow on the floor.
“Clean it, bacuum,” he ordered, and rolled one of them over the pillow.
Puck soon forgot about how bad his vacuum cleaners were behaving and instead found the unzipped outer pouch of OLeif’s violin case and rummaged through his old Suzuki books.
“Read, mama, read,” he asked, bringing the stack over to the couch where he had already plunked down his ukulele.
“I can’t read that, sweetie,” Collette explained. “It’s music. Not words.”
Puck seemed to understand and opened the music himself, looking carefully at the notes.
“Trucks,” he said to himself. “Trucks, trains.”
Collette wasn’t sure why he thought this, but it seemed to satisfy any questions he had about what, exactly, he was reading. And upside-down at that, before he figured it out, and turned it rightside-up.
He then amused himself by tearing all the papers off of his crayons.
Rose dropped in around the lunch hour to borrow a “less nice” top and running shoes to wear for frisbee golf at the park.
“Did you win?” Collette asked her when she returned.
“No,” she replied sheepishly. “I did terrible.”
But there would be other frisbee golf tournaments to come.
And upon waking from his nap, Puck fed his Fatty crackers in his highchair while organizing a cage full of matchbox cars and Doctor Who.
In the evening, he helped his dad drill up a garden patch by the shed while Collette prepared dinner and listened to Philip Glass with the windows open to the warm late afternoon.
After dinner, OLeif quizzed Puck.
“What’s your name, Puck?”
“Puck Silverspoon,” Puck said, with satisfaction and a huge grin.
“Who made you, Puck?”
“God,” he said seriously.
But then he grinned.