The Smartest Child Ever

I make no effort to hide the fact that I think I have the best child ever. I do so hoping that my neighbor believes the same about his child. And as competitive as I am, I've no desire to really know whose really is the best; it's the one time I'll openly root for a tie. I've worked with enough troubled youth to know that it really isn't how great they are, but how great people believe they are. They aren't troubled because they aren't good, but because every single person around them believes they aren't good.

With that, I'll carry on with the unbridled bragging that will continue to gobble of the gigabytes of space this service kindly provides for me to do so.

I called grandpa Almond yesterday morning to let him know Elliott and I would be running late (the reasons could be the subject of their own post). The conversation went something like this:

"Robert, this is Keith, Elliott and I are running behind, we're just now leaving home."

"No problem Keith, we'll see you when you get here."

"Thanks, we'll be there shortly."

I then hung up. Within seconds, Elliott is in the back seat saying "bye bye papa, bye bye papa". Now I am not the least bit surprised Elliott knows his papa, he points him out daily to anyone who will pay attention. It's the never ending introduction. But for him to hear me say his first name once in a conversation and connect the dots from there, I'm just not sure how he comes up with this stuff.

All week long our neighbor across the street has had a full-size school bus parked in front of his house. Elliott has spent as much time as we would permit him standing at the front door waving and saying "hi soul bus, hi soul bus".

Tonight when we arrived home, I was going through the normal routine. Pull the truck in the driveway, get out, open the back doors, reach in as far as I can to just barely reach this 23 pound ball of boy and then struggle to remove him through the tight confines of the back seat. It's like playing a real life game of operation without the minor electrocutions each time I bang his head against a truck part. Anyways, I have him safely removed from the truck and he starts in "bye bye bus, bye bye bus." I looked up and should not have been surprised, the bus was gone. I hadn't noticed. My son is now pointing things out to me, not things that are there, but things that aren't there and in his opinion should be. I was a little surprised he didn't ask me to call 911 and report the daggone thing stolen.

I was starting to have a little problem with the bus anyways. I planted a few pieces of a garden beside our house a couple of weekends ago. Not a big garden, just a few leftover peppers and non-salmonella tomatoes from some flats Katie bought to plant in pots. She informed me that according to the policies of our homeowners association, a garden had to be planted BEHIND a fence. This was hard enough to digest in itself, but the longer I watched this school bus block entire sunsets, I started to have issue with it.

Maybe that was why Elliott was so anxious to let me know the bus was gone. Thanks for looking out for me son.