Where's daddy?

This afternoon, Declan hollered his favorite word: Daaaa---yyy! I think he was talking to me, since we've both been responding to this precious display of name-calling with enthusiasm. So to confuse him further, I said "Where is daddy?" which is, unfortunately in this situation, the same thing I say on Saturday mornings around 7:30 a.m. when I've been up with the dink for two hours and I'm ready for daddy to take over. And the dink knows what that means. So he pointed to our bedroom door, just like he does on Saturdays, for me to carry him into our bedroom, let him turn on the light, and throw him on the bed to lift up sheets and covers and pillows to find daddy and wake him up. Actually, we do this routine during the week as well. So "where's daddy" was not the right thing to say to a poor little doo looking for his da-da. I tried to amend it by saying "Daddy's at work," but the dink was undeterred. "Uh, uh,"--it's his most commonly uttered sound. I mean his neverendingly uttered sound that manages to get him whatever it is he wants. So we walked into the bedroom and I put him on the bed. He slowly lifted each pillow on the bed with a mischievous grin, as if he expected daddy's big smiling sleepy head to emerge from underneath.

But of course, daddy didn't emerge. And dink moved on. But later in the evening, he practiced his newest string of syllables that resemble something we say--i ove ou. He probably said it fifteen times, sometimes to me, sometimes walking down the hall, and a couple times, to the ever-present yet missing man of the house: i ove ou daa--yy. Out of sight, working late hours at the office while me and dink snuggle and act silly and cook all sorts of things in the kitchen, but certainly not out of mind.