been busy lately

originally uploaded by pr9000.

The young lady holding the W Hotels rubber ducky -- probably named "D" for Ducky -- is my energetic little niece, Hailey. She and her mom visited us in Franklin last weekend.

If you haven't spent time with a four year old lately, I highly recommend it. You'll learn a lot about a lot -- for example, I heard amazing tales about what makes poo and pee, and the relative size of dogs' and cats' "holes" for releasing it. (For the record: dogs have small ones, cats are slightly larger, which didn't make sense to me but I wasn't about to ask her how she came to this conclusion.)

I learned how to spell a lot of words. I learned that Hailey's mama is one of the smartest people on the planet. I learned Trotter is my daughter -- she's still working on the whole how-are-you-related-to-me? question -- and that Fletcher, due to his girth, is a doggie.

Actually, a "dottie" because she has troubles with her "g" sounds. And her "k's" as well, which also come out with a hard "t" -- she got very, very upset when we asked her to tell us about her kitties. "i really want nice kitties," she said ... do the math and tell me it's not the most hilarious thing in the world, even though she didn't think so at the time.

We watched movies. We made a smoothie. We went to the neighborhood swimming pool. We took a ride in the convertible and took Trotter for a walk and in general had a fantastic time.

She's so literal -- everything she says is meant to be taken seriously, and she'll interpret our words the same way, which causes confusion at times. When we pass the Factory and I show her the company I work with that makes cartoons featuring large, talking vegetables, she frowns for a second and then asks "Is that where the talking vegetables work?" I say yes, and she thinks for a second ... then "That's silly Uncle Paul!" and she giggles with glee.

You know, it is silly if you think about it, which I try not to do that often.

She's only going to be four for a few short months, and I'm glad I got to spend time with her during it. She's too old to be a baby, too young to be jaded and calculating with every reaction -- she's surprisingly, disarmingly matter-of-fact and I think that's a great way to go through life.