Garrett has a favorite noise. It's a duck noise. A quack, if you will. If a one hundred and twenty pound mutant mallard from hell were to climb into your bed at night and QUACK into your ear, waking you out of a sound slumber and then QUACKING again directly into your face. It's like that.
It's impressive, really. Very realistic and at volumes hitherto unmeasured in the duck world.
If there were a duck quacking contest the way there are sheep calling contests, he would win. I think you get the picture? He's also a prolific quacker. He can quack, ten, twenty, thirty times in a row. He can chase his sister while quacking. He can drive me to send him to time-out and then pour a huge glass of Sauvignon Blanc (I prefer Giesen, but cooking wine will do on a heavy quacking night.), climb the stairs and sit on his bed without ever missing a quack.
I am sure the uses for quacking in the greater world are many and, while I am not one to squelch a child's artistic expression (What? Did you just spit out a mouthful of coffee/wine all over your keyboard? CRAFTS DO NOT COUNT AS ARTISTIC EXPRESSION BECAUSE THEY ARE DUMB AND SO IS QUACKING.), I have a dislike now bordering on manic hatred for the quacking and all I ever want is for it to stop. Immediately.
Matt. My darling husband. My true love for twenty years, over half of my life. My soulmate. My partner in parenting.
Matt bought Garrett a duck whistle for Christmas and put it in his stocking. It's beaked. It's a beak that quacks like a duck, loudly, when you blow into it. Most of you have children, right? So you know how the hateful little darlings like an object that makes noise? And their love for objects that make noise is second only to their love for objects that make noise when copious amounts of spittle are blown into them.
So, now I have four children obsessed with quacking and a duck beak that drips saliva that they share among themselves.
It was touch and go for a while, but our marriage survived. The jury is still out on the children.
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