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Early on the morning of August 30, 2005 I was awoke by my son. He spoke sternly from his crib, "If you don't drag your lazy butt out of bed before noon we are never going to finish cleaning the yard today." (To our defense, it was only 5 am) Nevertheless, he put us to work. He grabbed his rake and his little red wheel barrel and gave us marching orders, despite our insistence that we could handle the work ourselves (I was never really sure if he was just eager to help, or if he didn't trust us to do it right.) Occasionally he would taunt us about our techniques or lack of stamina, but mostly he was cheerful. At one point he jumped out from behind a bush and yelled, "DAAAAA!!!!!!!" (Scared his mom half to death.) As the work came to an end she asked him if he remembered who gave him that little red wheel barrel. He looked her straight in the eye and said, "Great Grandpa Junior gave me this wheel barrel, and I will miss him very much."
(I could almost hear Junior say, "Well I'll be damned!)
As part of an elaborate intimidation strategy, Parker "the warrior" Hansen sculpts his hair to resemble the sharp spines of the hedgehog. As he attacks his prey (usually his parents) with the business end of a stuffed animal (Amelia the hedgehog) he screams wildly why shaking his fists in the air. The tactic is already highly effective, reducing his enemy to fear and trembling (although some claim that his parents are only putting on a show) but the warrior is never content to let a strategy remain less than perfect. Currently "the warrior" has been seen training an actual hedgehog to attack at his command while wearing some sort of primal garb (diaper) and covered in dark skin painting (chocolate).
With his new haircut, Parker dons his sharpest outfit and heads for church. He is taking with him a magnetic drawing pad (which allows mom and dad to listen in sacrament meeting) with which he will capture images from the proceedings. He is the ultimate perfectionist, erasing with passion every stray line. He starts over, again and again and again, each time grunting in dissatisfaction at his error or brilliance at the new idea (I am not really sure which one it is). In the end, the canvas returns to the begining as he wipes it clean before putting it up until next Sunday. Maybe it is humility, or embarrassment, but he just prefers that the images he creates do not live on for more than a few minutes (most live significantly less than that). In the end he says that a wise man once told him, "The canvas will never be more beautiful than it is before you begin, so don't hesitate to draw in fear that you might make a mistake." (Yes, it was me who told him that, but really, I heard it from a wise man.)
Parker (the fiery preacher) prefers to prognosticate from the words of the great Dr. Suess. (It is not that he discounts the scriptures, quite the oppoiste in fact, but he finds the tales of Suess very relatable.) "Do you like my hat" he calls out to his congregation, and they reply, "We do, we like your party hat." He relates the tale of the great Mr. Brown, "Mr. Brown spent his whole life emulating the sounds of inanimate objects and spiritually unenlightened things, and where did that get him? Nowhere, that is until he found the 'soft, soft whisper of the Butterfly.'" He closes with a challenge, "Follow the Lord, and he will make you his forever. Remeber,"there's the Yottle in my Bottle who I do not wish to keep, but the Zillow on my Pillow always helps me fall asleep."
In what is sure to be only the first of many encounters, Parker and Morticia dueled relentlessly for control of the corner of his room hidden behind his crib. Parker had the advantage in size, speed, strength and intelligence, (given morticia's brain is barely the size of his pinky toe) Morticia, the more athletic of two, wanted it more and was willing to put it all on the line. In the end, talent outweighed desire, and Morticia was sent back to her cage shamefully defeated. Parker on the other hand followed her to her cage and rubbed his victory in her face by slapping his hand in torment against the glass while yelling, "Da, Da, Da." (Parker for "Whose your daddy!!!")
My son (who has not only the audacity to wash the car in his underwear, but also to rub my face in the fact that my underwear doesn't have cartoon characters on them either - what a show off) felt like he needed to cool down a little bit by drenching himself in dirty car washing water while he worked. Man, he works hard. Meanwhile his mother and grandmeh sat in the shade sipping lemonade and enjoying a cool summer breeze (all though who could blame them, Mississippi gets one cool summer breeze a year, and this was it). Parker worked so hard, and they lounged so long that one of our neighbors thought we were breaking child labor laws (they agreed not to report us in return for some child labor).
I will make this one short (mostly for the wussy faint in heart people, who will remain nameless - meh, wade, emily - who said I should not post this). My little southern man does not wear shoes. This is because his feet are like little balls of fat (and it looks like they would have to be uncomfortable strapped into flat bottom shoes as a result). Thus, he runs (and I do mean runs) everywhere, occasionally falling and hurting himself. I promise it doesn't bother him at all that his toe nails look like they belong to an 80 year old man (and they don't seem to hurt him much either).
One trait that lifts man up from the beast is his ability to find, and to make tools from his environment that he can then use to better his own circumstance or to accomplish some objective. For Parker, the newest tools to be added to his arsenal are the Spoon, the Fork, the Straw and the Ball. The spoon, fork & straw all serve to accelerate the eating process, making it more efficient and clean. The ball is mostly for entertainment (both his and mine). Now Parker has all but mastered the straw. The spoon and the fork he can maneuver into his mouth with out stabbing out anyone's eyes or ears (but as of now must still be laden by others). The ball has many facets of use which parker has mastered; throwing, yelling at, stopping with his head and body, etc.... (we are still work on the catching part)
Parker took an extreme interest in the pinata, but certainly not for what was in it (when the candy came down it was his father who had to push the other children out of the way so that the hero could have his reward) but instead for the shear delight of wacking some thing with a stick as hard as he could. Given that a 16 month old could only do som much damage to a very sturdy pinata, in fact none of the kids could open it (it took the birthday boy's father to do that), nevertheless I was and remain a proud father. His mother was also excited to see a glimps of athletic ablity (we all know he did not get that from me).
