Does

It's a little sorry, I know, to create entire blog posts of little anecdotes about "oh, Dash did the cutest thing ever the other day," but it can't be helped. As I mentioned in my previous post, my memory for his doings is almost nothing, so if I don't write this down I'm terrified it'll be gone forever.

Dash has many favorite books. He lurves him some reading (and by reading I mean pulling all of the movable parts off of the flap-py and pop-py books I insist on buying him even though I know he will destroy them immediately.) His favorite anything is Elmo. This is odd because he has literally never seen an episode of Sesame Street, but he has a close personal relationship with the creature. It must be a chip they implant at the hospital. There are two "look and find" Elmo books in our house (like Where's Waldo for dummies. or, you know, babies) and he can spot Elmo in fractions of a second. He can discern him from every other primary-colored Muppet without even really looking: "Dash, can you show Mama Elm...?" "BAM!" Index finger on the red puppet before I can get the word out. Done.

Anyway, this wasn't really supposed to be about Elmo. He also loves this book:

Which is fairly shocking to me. It was kinda pretentious and deluded of me to buy him a book that illustrates the ABCs with works of art from the permanent collection at the Met. But, huh, he likes it. OK, so you get the premise. A is for apple and there are paintings, figural and abstract, of apples to illustrate. Dash sees the apple, says "apple," and we all think he's a genius.

However, there is this page:


When he gets to "D" there is no talking. There is only a shimmy. I'm not fucking kidding. I know you don't believe me, but I swear to god it's the truth. The boy sees pictures of people dancing and he starts to dance.

I know that you have died already, but if I could just revive you for another moment.

There is also this page:


What do you think he does when he happens upon this page? Go on, guess. No, you'll never guess because it's just too much. But it's true: the child, without a sound from him or me, bends over the page and gives it a kiss.