Over the years, I've developed the bad habit of chewing out (and occasionally, cussing out) other drivers who don't act as they should on the road. I don't pull them over and physically confront them, of course; that would be stupid. But I do bark at my dashboard for a few seconds ("You moron, you accelerate as you enter the freeway. You don't brake!"). And while I've never felt the need to upbraid another driver in person, I can see where this relatively innocent mumbling could easily build into road rage.

Luckily, I'm on the road to recovery. Whenever I make a comment about another driver, my son Max always says, "Daddy mess up." If I'm really ticked off, I respond by telling Max precisely why the other driver ticked me off. Max always comes back with, "Daddy mess up." He keeps up this refrain until I admit that yes, indeed, I messed up.

He whips out "Daddy mess up" with regularity. Whenever I brake suddenly or change lanes too sharply or do anything he's not expecting, Max says, "Daddy mess up." I've learned to accept it, admit my mistake out loud to Max and move on.

Max says a lot of things, of course. He's two, so there's a lot on his mind. Right now he's just getting the hang of complex sentences. "I want to go outside so I can run around." Or "My foot hurts because I fell down." Stuff like that. It's pretty impressive when you consider that last year at this time he couldn't say much of anything, not even those one-syllable sounds that could mean any of a dozen words.

This morning, we went to the park. I sat down on a railroad tie at the edge of the playground, and Max followed suit. "Sit with Daddy and talk." he said. So we sat there, looking out at the pink and white dogwoods and the cascading azaleas and all the pollen floating down from the oaks, and we talked.

About what? Not much. Something about a boo-boo that had almost healed, and a serious discussion about the disposition of a nearby squirrel. A lengthy dissertation from Max as to why he should be allowed to eat as much chocolate as he wants, followed by a short--and emphatic--rebuttal from me. He took this setback philosophically. "More chocolate later." That's right, Max.

Max talks to himself. A lot. He talks to himself when he's going down for a nap or to sleep for the night. He talks to himself as he plays songs on his CD player. He talks to himself as he walks around. He even talks to himself while he's eating. Sometimes I think he's talking to me, but sometimes when I respond he just ignores me. That way I know to butt out.

Lately, he has been talking to and for his toy baby. The talking to is natural enough. He talks to all of his stuffed animals, his Legos, his rocking chair, you name it. But when he sits down and holds his baby in his lap, he'll often respond to his own words with a little something from the baby--a voice that is completely different than his own.

Well, it is his, of course, but it sounds nothing like any of his normal voices. His baby speaks in gibberish, a pathetic mewling that sounds something like the final cries of a wounded cat. The first time I heard it, I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. I assumed Max was making the noise, but I didn't see him and I thought he was hurt. When I walked into his room, I saw him holding the baby, but I didn't put it together. It took a couple more times for me to figure it all out.

The baby cries, and Max says things to make it feel better. I don't know where he picked all that up--some of it from Barbara and me, no doubt, but it's interesting that he's translated what we do to him to what he does with the baby. He doesn't think he's a baby (y'know, he's right), and he's just beginning to understand that he used to be a little, tiny baby (well, when you start off at 9 1/2 pounds, it's hard to be little or tiny, but still). Nonetheless, the level of concern he has for his baby is touching. As one mom in our playgroup has mentioned, he's the one kid in the group who is gentle enough and aware enough to hold a newborn--and she was speaking as the mother of a two-month-old.

When Max was born, I was excited for a number of reasons. Foremost was the chance to watch a person come into being over a number of years. Now I see that there's so much more than I ever imagined. I can watch him begin to etch his place in the world, to poke around and see how he fits in to the grand scheme of things.

Which means he's almost caught up to me.

Jon Worley's deepest conversations with Max take place at the ice cream shop.