Why we need a dog

After dinner tonight, Aiden crawled onto my lap and asked me to read him a book called "Puppy Parade" It's one of those obnoxious, foam-covered books that you get for $0.85 out of the discount bin at a dollar store because no one wants to pay the full dollar. The book is full of mesmerizing facts like "Some puppies are soft and fluffy" or "this puppy has a favorite chair", and even takes it to the next level by rhyming. I'm considering getting the other three books in the series: "Farm Friends", "Funny Bunnies", and "Kitty, Kitty". Sure to be winners.

Getting to the meat of the story, the last sentence of "Puppy Parade" reads, "And every puppy that you see says, 'Won't you come and play with me?" [yes, the book has differing font sizes]

After closing the book, Aiden looked up at me and asked "Daddy, can I go play with those puppies?" Now, Aiden has a pretty good imagination so this request didn't see too odd to me. As a matter of fact, earlier today, Aiden and his pet baby Jaguar were rescued by Diego after being dragged into a web by two large spiders. After that little bit of imaginary play, his asking to play with the two dogs from the book seemed fairly basic. Here's how the rest of the conversation went.

Me: "Sure buddy. You can go play with those dogs."
Aiden: "Can you help me?"
Me: "Um...sure."
Aiden: "Put the book on the ground."
Me: "...ok" [I put book on ground]
Aiden: "I gotta jump in the book to play with the dogs"
Me: "Oh. Ok."
Aiden: [Ensuring the book is open to the page with the two dogs, he proceeds to jump into the air, and directly onto the book]

Now here's where things took an unexpected turn.

Aiden: [standing on top of the book] "It didn't work daddy!"

Now this caught me slightly off guard as I now realized that he wasn't pretending but ACTUALLY trying to jump into the book. At this point, Kate walked by.

Aiden: "Witch"
Kate: "Excuse me?"
Aiden: "Witch Mommy, can you help me jump in the book so I can play with the dogs"
Kate: "Um...sure Aiden. Ok, jump."
Aiden: [Jumps a second time onto the book] "It's still not working!"

Kate and I start to laugh, but not hard enough to discourage him from continuing the game. This is getting amusing. Aiden stands on top of the book for a while, obviously pondering something. It finally clicks because he exclaims, "I know!" He then thrusts his hand into his Spider Man underwear (the only article of clothing he happens to be wearing at the time, not quite sure why) fishes around, pulls out an object unseen by Kate or me and holds it high in the air.

Aiden: "USE MY WAND!"

We pretty much lost it at this point. Even Kai laughed, but that was probably coincidence :) It was at this point that we realized he was reenacting a particular episode of Dora the Explorer where she jumps into a storybook to rescue the beautiful snow princess from the hands of an evil witch who hates the snow and all snow creatures. I'm guessing the geniuses at Nickelodeon intended this particular episode to subconsciously indoctrinate children to the dangers of global warming. However, the only thing it taught my kid is that he can jump into books in order to get puppies.

So, I say all of that to say this: we need to buy our kid a freakin' dog.