My son

My son... where do I begin? He is a *special* child in so many ways. When I say special, I mean it in so many ways too. We often tease to other people that Dylan is special, as in odd, weird, different, kooky, crazy, off the hook, funny and a whole multitude of other describers.

Here he is in his little water wings. I don't know what this face is, but I think he was doing some sappy eyed thing similar to Puss N Boots in Shrek. Why is he wearing water wings? Who knows, somebody left them at our pool and he likes playing with them. He doesn't need them, the boy is a fish. In fact, swimming was one of the first times I noticed how *special* Dylan was. It was summertime and Dylan was about 18 months old. He, in his little life jacket, would cannon ball off the diving board and swim in the pool for hours like he was a pro.... except he was about 25 pounds of baby.

Another is Dylan's special talents is he can make all sorts of unusual sounds with his mouth. Not just your typical boy farting noises, he can make machine gun sounds, lasers, rifles, bombs, other weapons I haven't a clue about. He does this usually by himself playing with his 'guys' (i.e. power rangers and the like) or playing outside with a stick by himself. He can entertain himself for hours.

We realized Dylan was bright as a toddler. Just little odd things he would say or do. Like he would beat Ally to the punch on simple math at age 3 and we had never really worked with him on addition. We never really 'taught' him to read, but by 4 he was reading some and with a little bit of time with me on sight words, he was completely reading by 4 1/2. He just surprises you with the stuff he knows sometimes. Like when he was a baby, 9 months old, he had barely started crawling and was a chubby thing, he stood up and walked 4 steps out of the blue. We didn't even think he would be walking until 12 months or more because he wasn't even cruising furniture.

In every way he is a boy. Except when he wants to play with the girls. Last week the girls were doing makeup and asked if they could do his nails and makeup, "I don't cawe' (he cant say his r's still, Ill get to that in a minute). He let these two nine year olds do a total makeover on his with makeup, nail polish, the whole shebang.

He cant say his Rs, th's or sh's. He has a little lisp. He will be telling you all about dinosaurs and the factoids about some Jurassic era or a specific about a certain dinosaur, something very intellectual, and it is coming out with a lisp and a lack of ths, rs, or shs. Its comical to me. He was kicked out of speech in kindergarten because they say these are things we dont worry about until 7. He is independent.. 'did you miss me when I was gone for 2 weeks to Europe Dylan?' his reply, no, I was fine.
He is a sweet kid. He comes in some mornings and snuggles... that is until he realizes he has a Wii he can go play.