Phone calls with a 3-year-old

Before he left, Rob told Will he’d be in Kentucky this week. That didn’t mean much to Will, since we’ve never traveled to Kentucky with him. So Rob explained that Kentucky was the football team he and Will had watched Georgia beat – that he was going to the state where that football team was from.

That was some muddy clarification. Now Will has decided that Rob is off attending a weeklong football game.

“How’s the game?” Will asks as soon as he gets on the phone with Rob. And when he doesn’t get a straight answer, he tries again: “But how’s the GAME?”

Here are some other excerpts of things I’ve overheard Will tell Rob on the phone over the past couple days:

Describing Owen's fever: “I think Owen had my bug but I think he was fighting it off. Mom was changing Owen’s diaper and it was wet and he had a fever. But then she was changing it again and it was off. It keeps turning on and off.”

Denying he lives here: “I’m not in my house. My house is down the other way but my neighbor is here.”

Assuming dad, who is actually quite safe in his hotel room, is still driving to the conference on day three of his absence, and worrying about the obstacles he might meet along the way: “Are you driving? But what if you see a shark? … But I don’t want to go to Colorado and see a shark. But what if a lion comes?”

But Will’s biggest concern has been whether dad will make it back for Christmas, which Will keeps assuming is imminent (as in: “Is Christmas tomorrow?”) ever since we got our tree and started the long march of the advent calendar. I’m starting to realize why my mother’s parents never got the tree up and decorated until Christmas Eve -- although the truth is I kind of enjoy the prolonged excitement.