My son was on the phone with my Mom, who he calls Vo-Vo (it’s Portuguese for grandma), when suddenly he blurted out, “Hey Vo-Vo! You know the biggest book in your house? Well, I love you all the pages in that book!” Apparently, he thought up a new version of his “I love you to infinity game”.

I smiled as he listened to her then he said, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, I love you 10,000 miles.”

I looked over at my little guy, fresh from a bath, all cozy on the couch in his Mario pajamas and I started to get teary. He looked so perfect and sweet, holding the phone to his ear and it melted my heart to hear him talking to my Mom like that.

Again, he took in her reply, “Oh! Uh-huh. Well, I love you all the way into space in a rocket ship.”

He listened again as she tried to top him and I should have known the heart-melting wouldn’t last.

Because he then grew tired of his own game when he let out a big sigh then said, “You know what? I think we tied.”

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It is every parent’s hope and dream that their children will turn out better than they did. We wish for better opportunities, less stress and more intelligence for our offspring.

When I play with our new puppy, Daisy, I get down on the floor and talk in puppy language. I say things like, “Let me rub that super-duper, pupper-wupper, Buddha, frog belly and those oogley-googley ears!”

Yesterday, my ten year old daughter was romping on the floor with Daisy when I heard her say, “Daisy! How in the world can you be holding me down when you don’t even have opposable thumbs?”

If our puppy talk is any indication, this kid already has me beat in the intelligence department.

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Yesterday at school, my son exhibited some peculiar behavior when he wouldn’t stop following the principal around. At one point, she came to the second grade classroom where I work to see if I could help, but once my son saw me coming, he turned and went straight to his class.

Later, during a school musical, he asked his teacher if he could sit with the principal and she obliged. As his class was being dismissed, I came out to the hall to see him tailing the poor woman once again. And to top it off, he was doing all of this in silence, like a mime, and we all know how much everybody loves a mime. Oh, wait…

All this? Is not because he has special needs. It is because he’s trying to be funny. When he first started playing the “Me and My Shadow” game, with my boss, I heard her laugh as he was silently standing before her and she asked, “What in the world are you doing?” That was all he needed. One little chuckle and that comic’s bread was slathered with butter.

I was trying to explain this to some parents at soccer practice last night. They both know my son, but neither of them had recognized that he does some strange stuff in an attempt to be funny.

A short time later we looked over to the field where my son was playing goalie during a scrimmage. There were 20 kids waiting for him to kick the ball out to the middle so play could resume. A typical kid would have seen an eager mob, jumping up and down and yelling, “Kick it! Kick the ball!” My son saw a captive audience.

Instead of kicking the ball to his teammates, he slowly walked around to the other side and kicked it into his own goal. The one he was supposed to be protecting.

I turned to the dad I had just been talking to and asked, “See? You see what I mean? He thinks he’s being funny.”

He replied, “Well…he kind of is.”

He might as well have pulled a butter knife out of his pocket.

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Yesterday morning, I tested my level of parenting endurance when the school where I work said they needed me to leave my second grade class for the day and go on my son’s field trip. Thirty kindergartners, a city bus, a downtown transfer and an imminent rainstorm, all at the ripe hour of 8:00 AM.

First, we missed our bus. Then as we stood waiting for the next one to arrive, my son tugged on my arm to tell me he had to poop. Of course.

I did what any self-respecting mother would do and said, “I don’t know what to tell you. You’re going to have to just shove it back up in there.”

On the bus, we met lots of colorful characters. At one point, I mentioned to my son that our new puppy would likely pee in her cage because we would be gone so long, to which he replied, “I bet she will. I can kind of smell her pee right now.” No sweetie, that’s the guy standing next to me.

After the field trip, we waited an eternity for the bus to take us back downtown. We were in a lovely area of Columbus, affectionately referred to as “The Bottoms”. There was lots of trash for the kids to play with and some delightful graffiti for our emerging readers. Something about someone’s mom and a particular body part.

On the bus trip home, I can’t decide if it was more fun to stand for half the ride, or whether it was watching my son’s “buddy” touch the bottom of his shoes and then hold my son’s hand as we walked back to school in the rain. When we finally got back to our car, I just went ahead and had my boy drink some hand-sanitizer.

After arriving home, I spent over an hour on the phone (45 minutes of that on hold) trying to find a baker who can make a Mario cake for my son’s birthday party this weekend. Sorry kid, you’re getting Matchbox cars.

Then, I cleaned pee out of the puppy’s cage. Not from when we were gone for four hours in the morning, but from when I put her in there for 15 minutes so I could do some laundry. Which, makes perfect sense. Oh, and she learned how to climb the steps, so now I have two levels of house on which to chase her.

And, for the icing on the cake? I found my son had etched a self-portrait into our mahogany dining room table.

Some days, there just isn’t enough wine.

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