Bill Jackson, super-criminal

Here's Bill Jackson's story, as dictated by my son Dash, age 4.5 years:

"Have you heard of Bill Jackson? Bill Jackson is a very famous car thief from California. Bill Jackson lost his legs in an explosion, and replaced them with rockets. He puts bombs inside of grapes and waits until people try to eat the grapes and blows them up and then steals their cars. He flies over to the car and uses his spear and axe to operate the pedals.

Bill Jackson stole my memory integrator, so we need to catch him. Here's the PLAN! [index finger pointed UP!] We need to call the President and send the Army and the Navy to California to blow up his house. First, we have to set a trap for Bill Jackson by drawing a life-size picture of his wife [named Jackie Jackson]. While he's distracted with his wife's picture, Rosie [Dash's older sister] and me can sneak into Bill Jackson's house to get my memory integrator back before his house gets blown up.

President Obama will get a phone call from Daddy and that will let him know it's time to blow up Bill Jackson's house."

Dash drew this picture of Bill Jackson, with rockets instead of legs.

Dash Wants to Reformat Your Harddrive

Four-and-a-half year old Dash still isn’t reading. Yesterday, he drew the letter “A” all over his legs, feet, and belly (making tattoos!), but when I asked him to tell me what letter he wrote, he told me, “Um, I can’t remember.” He can sing the Alphabet Song, but can’t tell you how to spell his name. If you ask him, he’ll say, “H? S?” I’m trying to to be frustrated by this because he’s remarkably wonderful at other things, such as manipulating our computer.

Just this morning, he managed to start up my laptop (lugging it from my bedroom onto the dining table), open movie applications, and find movies to watch all while I was taking a shower. He’s also been sending emails and SMS (all gibberish, with lots of EMOJI), recording voice memos on my iPhone, and has tried to download updates to my applications. We usually catch him with the “Settings” dialog open, furiously trying to re-engage the dilithium-crystal array.

I caught two unsent emails hanging out in the Outbox on my iPhone recently, obviously his doing: one was a garbled attempt to reply to an email that landed in my spam folder (rightfully spam, as it was a type of Nigerian 419 money scam); the other was more curious. Addressed to “bnng@gsc_remborkeg” (can you believe that he knew to put an @ sign in the recipient field?!?), no subject, there was only an attachment, a voice memo that he had recorded.

I’m posting the voice memo below. I think he wanted to share it with you.

[Voice memo coming soon, having some technical difficulties. Dash probably would have got it through by now.]

Dash & his New T-Rex (made by me!)

RAWR!!!

I just finished this T-Rex doll for Dash. He named him Shaggy, after
the Scooby-doo character (a recent favorite show).

My little mountaineers

After last Friday's 3 foot snow, we dug out our driveway, creating
huge hills for Rosie & Dash to climb on. Dash asked us to dress him in
all black so he would look like a secret agent. Hard to be stealthy
surrounded by all that white!

See how our black car is cleared off? By Tuesday, it had another 8
inches piled on. What a blizzard!

Littlest Pet Shop and What?

Agent Dana Scully of the X-Files? I didn't know you were also a
veterinarian!

Today's visual non-sequitur is courtesy Rosie, my wacky, adorable
daughter, creatively combining playsets.