Thanks, Dora

Today Cassidy started her week long art camp. In truth it is something that I thought would fill her week and stifle the all too often urge between the two of us to spear the other on a long spit and roast her over an open flame in preparation for dinner. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship for the camp and if today is any read, she is going to love her week.
I left Devon at home with my brother to sit with him and while Cass was making book pages of one sort or another, Loren and I hiked up the now grassy hills of the ski mountain where I work in the snowy months of the year. We chatted, or rather Loren talked while I nodded my head and mostly listened, and got our heart rates up. After about an hour we were on our return back to get Cass when we saw something amazing. The most beautiful fox I have ever seen ( and I have only ever seen two others in the wild) crossed our path. He was magnificent. His red, bushy tail was as long as his body and larger in circumference than the average toddler. Loren and I stopped as I pumped his arm up and down and whispered frantically, “Look! Look! Look! Oh my god, do you see that?” And how could he not? The fox was 20 feet in front of us and meandering through a meadow. We watched, stupified, as the fox scampered down a hill, turning now and then to watch us, as if to say, “What the hell? Go away, you fools.” As the fox slipped into the foliage, Loren picked up where he left off and I was treated to another hour of the detailed secrets of snowskate tricks.
When I got home and was sitting with Devon in the hammock I told him of my foxy adventure with Loren. As I described the gorgeous red tail, Devon sat with a look of awe on his chubby cheeks. I thought for sure he was envisioning the green, mountainy meadow and the pointy eared creature as he scrunched up his lips and squinted his eyes in concentration. But then he exclaimed at the top of his lungs, “You saw him too? (Yes, Devon uses the past tense with ease.) That Swiper, Mai-Mai! You see Swiper, too!!!!!!!!!! That Swiper a bauddy (naughty, he can use the past tense but has some enunciation issues now and then) one! He swipe things from Dora!”
“Oh, yes’, I replied, because how could I not support his excitement, even if it was linked to Dora. “Lo-Lo and I saw Swiper in the forrest today. ”
“He swipe from you, Mai-Mai?” Asked Devon with the look of wonder still rosey in his cheeks.
“No, honey. He just wanted to walk into the woods today.”

After our Dora discussion, Devon and I sat out on the patio for dinner. I never tire of his vanilla flavor of cuteness.