Wyatt Z

Maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a geeky professor. I was in engineering and statistical analysis before I changed over to psychology, so my history is a bit of the ol’ geek-a-zoid variety. I’ve always wanted to have dozens and dozens of close friends and be the popular chick everyone thinks of first, but that just has never been my experience. (OK, maybe at the end of my time at Chapel Hill I had all the close friends I could want, but since then, I have always wanted to have more close friends than I do)

But when Conor started making friends, especially “real” friends that he would talk about when they weren’t around, I’ve been really proud and impressed by him. (I use the term “talk” quite loosely; I really mean “Says their name and then babbles something incomprehensible.") When we leave school, Conor’s points out Charles’ car (actually, Charles’ mommy’s car). Conor points to Wyatt’s mommy and calls to her in the parking lot. I sing songs at night and substitute his classmates’ names for key words and he laughs like they just appeared in the room.

It’s really cute.

But it’s not nearly as cute as what happened yesterday morning after Conor woke up the god awful hour of 4:45 and we brought him to bed with us. (That part wasn’t cute). We were still trying to get 15 more minutes of sleep around 6:15, when Conor sat up in bed and started pounding on, I mean, petting Simba. Then he started spontaneously singing the alphabet song. We’ve been singing it together for a while, but he’s never started doing it himself. (And when I say "singing it together", I mean "shouting out a few letters that end in the 'e' sound like D, E, P") So we were listening intently (ok, really half asleep) to see how far he could get through it but trying not to look too interested. (Again, not really a problem because our eyes were shut)

He got caught in a L-M-N-O-P loop which kept sending him back to E or G, but finally he broke through and started down the R-S-T-U-V lane. One or two letters were missing or slurred, but generally, he was on the right track.

Then came the big finale which previously has been where he shouts out ME!!!!! at the end of the song as in “next time won’t you sing with ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!” It’s apparently a big feature at daycare. Sometimes, all he’ll sing of the song is ME!!!! This time, though, he was still in the letters:

T-U-V. W-X-Wyatt-Z.

I thought we were going to die.

It’s been very hard since then not to sing “Wyatt-Z” at the end of the alphabet song. We only got to hear him say Yayatt for a week or so until he self-corrected to Wyatt. And for Wyatt, why not let him be the star of the alphabet song for a little while longer? You only get so long to be the cutest thing on earth.