Home again, home again

I'm back. Wild Thing was very good while I was gone, though he is obviously quite happy to have me back. Overworked Spouse took much of today to prepare her final exam, so I was on duty most of the day; happily, WT was generally enthusiastic about everything I proposed. He was especially happy with my proposal that we use one of his spare bedsheets as an impromptu tent, strung up between couch and coffee table. Asked by Overworked Spouse what he thought about this activity, he yelled "It's great!"

WT has lately been insisting that OS read him The Cat in the Hat Comes Back in a rather novel way. The book has been retitled: The Cat in the Hat Goes Away. The plot details vary and are sometimes freely improvised, but in general they invert the themes and motifs of the original. WT replicates this peculiar inversion in smaller ways and in other contexts. This book, for example, which originally led to random outburts of "No, Pat, no, don't sit on that!" has now inspired him to pronounce, with some frequency, "Yes, Pat, sit on that!" These words uttered with a grin marked with both delight and mischief. It's the linguistic equivalent of his habit of putting puzzles back together incorrectly, I suppose.