Me and Hudson

I babysat my "almost five" year old nephew, Hudson, the other day. It was just the two of us, which hasn't happened for a very long time. And he was awesome. He came with me to the gym (him to day care and me to yoga), we noshed on cinnamon toast at my place while watching Disney's "The Sword in the Stone", and then we read books back at his place waiting for his regular sitter to come home. Amid repeated explanations on how "Crazy" Merlin the Wizard was and predicting that the young Arthur would probably be the one to pull the sword out of that anvil (the picture on the DVD cover had nothing to do with his excellent guess) he pretty much yakked my ear off for about 3+ hours. In the best way, of course.

My favorite, though, was his retelling of his all-time worst and best dreams ever.

• Worst: A snake was chasing him trying to bite off his ear. (He'd had that dream just earlier that day. The horror was still fresh in his mind.)


• Best: He was hanging out with a friendly tyrannosaurus rex and was teaching the dinosaur to play Mario Kart on the Wii. The best moment was when they "both won - [Hudson] got first and T-Rex got second."

Oh, to be a four-almost FIVE-year old little boy. Although a friendly t-rex to play video games with would be pretty fantastic at any age. Especially if it always performed just slightly worse than you.

* photo of Hudson/T-Rex by his mom, Amelia Lyon (of course)