Daddy Delirium

Today The Boy brought home the artwork above, another in his expansive “Robot” series. But that’s not what has me so pleased; by now I’m conditioned to expect top-notch robot illustrations from the lad.

As occasionally happens, the job of putting him to bed fell to me tonight. After the compulsory milk-fetching event, I sang him our traditional wake-up/go-to-sleep tune, “I Walk The Line.”

I started with the classic recording’s “hummmm…” to find the pitch, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t mimic me, landing on the same pitch after only a brief effort.

Wondering if it was a coincidence, I switched to the higher “hummmm…” of the second verse and he mimicked me again, matching my pitch this time almost immediately.

“You have pitch!” I yelled at him. “You’ll be able to sing! You have no idea how cool this is…” I was genuinely excited. Singing even averagely well has been one of the great cool things in my life. I’m so glad he’ll have this avenue of expression available to him.

He could see that he was winning my approval, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that when I switched to the lyrics and paused at the end of each line, he sang back an approximation of that line to me. He didn’t nail any of them, but he came awfully close on a few. And he always ended on or near the correct last note of the line.

I may have to start putting him to bed more often. Waking up he’s quiet and cuddly (even when we’re not watching “Batman”), but going to bed he becomes a performer. It’s his venue and he makes the most of it.

Really, I couldn’t have been any happier if he had pulled the cure for the common cold out of his box of crayons.