My bride and I have been together for a pretty long time now (this summer will be our twelth wedding anniversary). It's pretty common that we will be able to hold whole conversations without ever finishing a sentence. 'Hey, did you see...?' 'Yeah, what was he...?' 'I've no idea, but I bet...' 'You know it!' Today, my bride and I were both searching for the garage door opener. But neither of us could actually articulate the words 'garage door opener'. We never actually managed to say what we were looking for. Me: Have you seen the...? Bride: I thought you had... Me: No, I haven't seen it since... Bride: Hey, Ella, have you...? Critter: I'll get it! It's in my... Me: When did you put it...? Critter: I got it before to put my bike away - here you go Dadddy. And sure enough, she had the garage door opener in her jacket pocket. Today, we realized, the Critter has now completely joined the hive mind.

Now that we've got a mammoth mahogany timekeeper, we're working on telling time with the Critter. When the bells chime, we all stop and count the chimes together out loud, and then introduce the concept of o' clock. Last night, we paused the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica (it's crazy good) as the bells chimed again, and turned to the Critter. Me: Eight bells. What time is it, then? Critter: (pauses and thinks) Now. No more Kafka-hour specials on Little Einsteins for that kid.

There are times in a parent's life where you can actually see your half of the chromosone contribution flaunting itself. Generally, you have about a fifty-fifty chance of that relating to an attribute you'd really rather had not had to be passed down. Like unmanageble hair. Or an obsession with all things Manilow. But when the Critter insisted we make cornbread together three nights in a row because she just couldn't get enough, I could see those Georgia genes flaunting themselves in the best way. How many three year olds do you know this handy with a cast iron skillet? And when she joined me on the couch to eat a slice of fresh, warm cornbread crumbled into a glass of milk (guaranteed to disgust my bride, every time), my heart was just bursting with the kind of paternal pride that you only get to experience five or six times in your life, if you're lucky. Next month, we take her to her official examination for private school admission. Under "race" I'll put "half-cracker".