The Fly Hunter

Jayden cracks me up. Two summers ago, when we first moved into our house, Granna bought Jayden his very own flyswatter because he was terrified of flies. It became his "security blanket" that summer. Well, we lost it somewhere, sometime, since then. I'd totally forgotten we'd even had it. We didn't have any real fly problems since then, either. Well, this afternoon when the kids came back home from Grandma Richardson's house, there was a fly in the house. All of a sudden, I see Jayden flying up the stairs with the flyswatter above his head like a soldier charging into battle. That little boy gave me an hour of free entertainment as he stalked and "hunted" the fly. He'd charge it from across the room with a battle cry, he'd hide upstairs and then tip-toe through the rooms stalking it, and he'd jump and twirl around while he tried to swat it out of the air. Every so often he'd ask me to go "Get that fly, 'cuz I can't!". I'd just tell him to keep on trying and that he would eventually get it. I was just having too much fun watching him! Oh, he took it so seriously! We even called Grandma Kathi a few times to keep her updated on Jay's fly hunting progress. When I'd ask him what he was trying to do, he'd reply: "I'm gonna SMACK dat fly DOWN!!" He'd crouch, crawl, jump, climb, and just do anything he could think of to get that blasted fly! And he DID! He finally got it, BY HIMSELF! The fly had landed on the windowsill behind the couch. (And Jayden reinacted this, too, by the way...I'm going to see if I can borrow Kristi's video camera tonight and see if he'll do it again...) Jayden brought the flyswatter up like a spear and jabbed it. He was so tickled and excited that he'd actually gotten the fly. We called Grandma Kathi and he told her (and showed her) exactly how he'd done it.
Since then he's been patrolling the house with his flyswatter, ready to pounce at the next fly. He's even pretended to chase a few and asked me if I knew where any "real flies" he could SWAT DOWN were.