Huddyisms, Vol. 1

We need a cheer-up.

It’s been a rough few weeks. Ankle is still in a bad way after my little adventure and while not broken, it may take weeks to months to heal depending on how badly I injured it. Work is two steps forward, one step back (hobbling the whole way on the ankle), and it’s disheartening. We’ve had some major expenses this year (whole new roof! car repairs! replacing old busted mattress and frame! health stuff!) and our central air decided to die last night in the middle of a massive 90+ degree heatwave. Thankfully, the A/C repairperson was available today and fixed it for less than we thought, but still far more than we would have liked to spend this month.

There is good news. My aunt, who has been waiting patiently for a kidney after her last transplant didn’t take, got the call this week and things are looking very tentatively good for her new organ chum which she’s named Buttercup. We’re cheering her and her new kidney on. I received an NIH Loan Repayment Program Award to help cover some of my student loan debt over the next two years, which is great because the awesome affordable loan repayment plan called SAVE, which I signed up for under the last President who actually cared about students, is probably not going to survive the court challenges and the dismantling of the Department of Education (they can just do that? apparently?) and the monthly repayment amount is obscene. One of my dearest friends finally got the full-time position she’s been promised for a year and a half and is living in a place that is safe and happy for her after years of unstable and not great housing situations.

And, of course, there’s Hudson, who is the best thing going in my life. We’re potty training (and by we I mean mostly Royal is doing the heavy daily lifting) and it’s going pretty well, for the most part! We’re asking to pee in the toilet. We’ve had several nights of totally dry diapers, and days of all day dry Pull-Ups and training pants. A few accidents and we haven’t figured out poop signals yet (the horrors…), but the progress has been solid. Or liquid, at least.

What this cheer-up post is really about, though, is Huddyisms. Hudson turned 3 in May. Shortly after, as we approached his 3 year checkup, I said to Royal, “I’m a little worried about his vocabulary and language. When he wants to be understood he is but he isn’t saying as many words as I would expect.” And basically overnight, his vocabulary EXPLODED.

I know parents worry about their kids’ development needlessly, but it was a relief and also a total joy…for the most part. When he’s not a little sassbot.

Here are some recent greatest hits from the sweetest little cheese face.

“DAMMIT!” Hudson says, pointing at a shelf in the fridge.

“We don’t say that. We say ‘nuts,’” I remind him of the phrase we use for frustration exclamations instead. He shakes his head and points at the shelf again. “DAMMIT. DAMWIT. DANWIT.”

Finally, after several pleas to say “NUTS,” I hear the changes in the words. “Sandwich?” “YEAH, Mommy!” I pull out lunchmeat, pepperjack cheese, mustard, and bread. I put out the bread. “Hot or cold?” “No hot.” I pick up the mustard. “NO.” I try the meat. “NO MEAT NO.” I hold up the cheese. “NO. Yewwol.” I switch for the American cheese and put a slice straight on the bread, then I look at him. He sighs, and with the patience of an elderly monk, he steeples his hands together and says with gentle emphasis, “Mama, you must make it a HOUSE.”

I don’t know what this means, but I fold the sandwich in half anyway and say, “Good?” He reaches over for my wrist and lifts my hand up from the board…and high fives me. “Good job, Mama,” he tells me over his shoulder as he’s already marching towards the living room. He is done instructing, and done with me. My remaining task is to bring him his snack, which he then disassembles and eats in pieces. He holds up the cheese at one point, looks at me, and says, "NOT a triangle.”

I have “made the house” incorrectly. I feel deeply judged.

For Father’s Day, I bought stuff for a charcuterie board for a snacky chill family day at home. One of the items was a jar of pimento-stuffed olives, which was sitting on the counter afterwards. As Royal was working in the kitchen, Hudson came to stand next to him and studied the jar very seriously for a while. Finally, he squints at it and says, somberly, “Wa-ter beans.”

He pauses, looks at Royal, looks at the jar, and nods. “Beans. In. Wa-ter.”

We haven’t referred to olives as anything else since.

Hudson and Royal were running to the grocery store the other day while I was working on the couch, leg propped up. They were out the door for all of about 15 seconds when Hudson came back into the house. “Go tell Mama,” Royal encouraged him, and he came around to bring me a little dandelion. “Fwoer for you.” Royal said he saw it as they were getting in the truck and was insistent that it was for Mama. It is perfect.

The Orkin guy comes to our house every 2 months, since the Great Ant Migration of 2015. We’d just moved into our new house and my bandmate Christian had taken over my office space temporarily as he figured out his next housing situation. One night, Christian comes out of his room, pale, and said, “You have GOT to see this.” Ants were storming out of the light fixture in a beautiful sharp ray pattern, getting a certain distance away from the light, and then just DROPPING DEAD and RAINING ON HIS BED. It was unnervingly pretty but horrifying. The exterminator said they were attracted to the electricity, which hadn’t been on in that room for a minute, but we used sage on the whole house after that anyway. Electricity or evil energy, science or witchery? Let’s cover all the bases.

We’ve kept Orkin’s services current because we also had the Mousening of 2017 when mice burrowed into our pantry from the garage somehow and made an ungodly mess and the Rat Invasion of 2023 when a tree rat let itself in through the now-banished dog door to feast on travel-sized chocolates and peanut butter and I ended up leaping on a chair while Royal abandoned me to my fate. This summer, though, we’ve had a recent spate of Spiders Spiders Everywhere. Generally, we have a covenant with spiders in this household: up on the ceiling? outside minding your business? Do your thing, spiders! Eat bugs! Be merry! Dropping right down in my face in the middle of a shower? You will die screaming. And I mean I will be screaming.

Hudson has become a big fan of the show Spidey and His Amazing Friends, which is a little animated show where the Spideyfriends are all kids doing little fun adventures, going to the zoo or aquarium or holidays while saving the day. The theme song is by the guy from Fall Out Boy so it’s catchy and will stick in your head for days, you’ve been warned. On occasion, Huds will actually refer to the show as “Spiderman,” but generally, this is “Itsy-Man,” which he has called Spiderman for a long time and we heartily reinforce because it’s too cute not to. It’s sweet and colorful and there’s some fun stuff to learn.

We didn’t realize how much Huds had been absorbing from the show until the Orkin guy came for his regular visit the other day and Royal was telling him about our recent spider encounters. “No problem,” said the Orkin guy, “I’ll knock the webs down around the house outside and spray.” Hudson, standing behind Royal, piped up. “Spiders are friends,” he interjected, and stared down the Orkin guy, which didn’t make him feel awkward about spider murder AT ALL, I’m sure. Sure, man, go kill this toddler’s friends, I’m sure that will make you feel awesome. Sorry. Please bill us.

Hudson also has an Itsy-Man mask that our neighbor gave him for his birthday. Royal put it on a houseplant stuffie from Auntie Lianna. We call it Spider-Plant.

Amongst Hudson’s many and varied toddler interests, dinosaurs and robots (or BOBOTS as they are often called) are high on the list. There’s a few kids’ shows that mash those concepts up, including a new animated Jurassic Park cartoon that he really likes. We’ve been offering him choices for clothes for a year or so now. He likes animals and superheroes and Star Wars, but when given a choice between anything and something with a dinosaur on it, right now, dinosaur usually wins. (Unless it’s Bluey. Oh boy, do we love Bluey.)

I’m working from home today in an attempt to try to rest my ankle and get a manuscript moving. I popped out to the living room to check on my sweeties as we awaited the A/C repair. Hudson was watching his Jurassic Park cartoon for a bit, and I said hello. “Oh, hello, Mama!” I asked him what was going on in the show and he produced a sort of garbly-burbly half-sensical story about robots and dinosaurs, and a tiger with BIG EYES that came out and attacked, but the people were sad. I pointed at the reptile on his shirt, thinking maybe he picked it because he thought it was a dinosaur. “And what kind of dinosaur is that?”

“No, it is a crocodile,” he said, VERY clearly and cleanly. I was very proud of him and went to give him a hug. “No,” he said, pointing at the TV I was blocking. “You are stopping the dinosaurs.” “Should I move?” He smiled, gave me a big hug and kiss, and then said, in a very sweet sing-song voice, “I looove yeeew! BYE!” and wiggled his hands exaggeratedly at me in a half-wave, half-shooing motion.

I am, again, patronized by a toddler.

Hudson and Bucky remain the very best of friends. We’re in the middle of a brutal heatwave in Oregon. Last weekend, my sister Erica brought her boyfriend’s kids over so all three could play in our splash pad. The little boy is a year older than Huds, and the little girl is a year younger. They all got along great, as they have before, and splashed and played for three hours. Royal brought them many snacks and Otter Pops. I warned the kids before they came in that we had a very big friendly dog. The older one was not immediately a fan of big enthusiastic dumb Buckminsterdog, but the little one quickly made best friends with him and had nothing but enthusiastic little barks and pets for him all afternoon. Here’s Huds and Buck having a snuggle, and Huds trying to convince the children that he is also a children, he should have their snacks, please. (They were eager to share goldfish and Otter Pops with him, so they’re all fast friends now. Erica says it’s okay to share this picture, and they’re really flipping cute here.)

With that, I should probably stop putting off this manuscript that I’ve been trying to finish with little success all week. (Did you know that when scientists publish an article, we pay for it? This paper, which will probably be something like 8 published pages with the figures, will run me probably $3500. You don’t publish to get rich…unless you’re a publisher, then you totally do.) Huds has an earache and some big opinions this afternoon, plus the ankle pain and dealing with A/C, so I’m just behind on everything, but sharing my joyous, amazing, inspiring, funny, insightful, bizarre kid’s brain has helped a lot. I hope you, too, have enjoyed this first of what I hope is many volumes of Huddyisms.

One more picture for the road: training pants, a shirt that reminds me of Mt. Fuji, Mama and Daddy’s big new mattress box play area, and a little cloth basket as a hat. Ridiculous boy. ❤️