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Sometimes I worry that in all the writing I do about the challenges of life with Larkin, what goes missing is the simple fun, the sheer daily hilarity of hanging out with her. This is especially true now that the Terrible Twos and Furious Threes have yielded to the Fabulous Fours. Larkin is a four-year-old through and through.

I'm no longer surprised at being surprised by her. We're in the car, I've got "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch" by the Four Tops on the CD player for the fifth time in a row -- at Larkin's insistence -- and I glance back to see her doing a pretty good air trumpet, fingers flipping in front of her mouth, cheeks puffed out. 

"Daddy," she says, "you sing the words and I'll play the trumpet, OK?" 

"OK," I say. "But since when do you play the trumpet?"

"Oh, I know my instruments," she boasts.

I love these dead-on imitations of adults and our attitudes. Talking about her past, she sounds like a nostalgic old-timer jawing away: "Remember the old days, when I used to have a binky every night?" Grimacing at a savage bombardment by our malodorous bulldog, Bert, she holds her nose and exclaims: "Will somebody please get that reeking creature out of here?" She'll parrot something her teacher said, matter-of-factly announcing: "Mom, Dad, Chinese New Year's coming up soon, and I'm going to be talking a lot about that."  And the other afternoon I found her sitting on the toilet, holding the New York Times out in front of her. "Can you please close the door?" she demanded. "I'm reading."

These days I often begin my day laughing. Yesterday at 6 AM, when I went to her half-open bedroom door and peeked in, she called out: "Dad, don't just stand there like a statue!" Today she greeted me with a degrading flight of fancy. "Dad, what if they called my school Booger School, and everyone was supposed to eat their boogers?" She's getting pretty agile with potty-mouth talk. One day she ate something that gave her urine a greenish tinge. "Hey!" she enthused. "St. Paddy's Day pee!"

At four your child knows more than you think she knows.  Like the time I was wishing a friend good luck before a TV appearance, and told him to break a leg. "That means do a really good job!" Larkin piped in. Or when we were at the shoe store, and Lark tried on a pink suede boot. Better try the other one on too, I said. "Right," she said. "Because nobody wants a one-booted princess!" One-booted?  One blustery winter day we bundle up and head outside. A classic Nor'easter, and as we head up the block, the storm is blasting straight at us. Larkin stops. "I don't want to go north," she says. "The snow is coming from there. Lets go south."

When did she learn geography?

Then there are the things you've thought about without really thinking about them--until your four-year-old points them out. "Dad," Larkin asks me, out of the blue, "isn't it funny that people eat ice cream even in winter?" Or: "Isn't it funny that the word 'letters' has letters in it?"
Yes, actually, it is.

And all the times she's clearly enjoying yanking our chain. Yesterday she was dragging the hose back and forth through a patch of spring mud in the back yard, making a "mud snake." This morning we came out to go to school.

"Hey," she said, "how did the hose get all dirty like that?"

"Gee, Lark, I dunno. How do you think it got like that?"

"Because I was dragging it through the mud!"

"Exactly." 

She looked at me mischievously. "Who's going to do something about that?"

"You mean, clean it off? Well, I nominate you."  

She rolled her eyes and gave me a look of patient forbearance. "Dad-dy," she said.  "I'm a kid. You're the grownup. Grownups have to do all the work."

I had to laugh -- again. Finally there are all the games. Dad, lets pretend we're both tigers, and it starts to rain and we have to use our umbrellas! Dad, you lie on the couch and pretend you're asleep, and I'll come jump on you!  Dad, lets put on music and do crazy dancing!

Thirteen years ago, at a raw time in Molly's and my life, when humor was in short supply, we saw a bulldog being walked on a street in  Boston, and laughed ourselves silly at its ridiculous face and bumbling manner. Soon thereafter we bought a bulldog, for the express purpose of importing some merriment into our lives. That dog is now our somnolent (and stinky) old man; he doesn't do much these days but lie around, but his laugh gig has been taken over, and then some, by our daughter. She's got entertainment value.

Yesterday we're walking home from school and I asked her, "What did you do in gym today? Did you play games?" 

"No, we just ran around like turkeys looking for something to eat!" 

"Show me," I say. And she does, ducking her head and lurching around in wild circles. 

These are the things you never manage to capture on video--by the time you have the camera ready, your child goes silent and puts on her fake "film me!" smile. How many times a day do Molly and I say to each other, we have to write that down?

And now I just did.