"Daddy Killed A Coyote"

So. Rudy is officially all ears. We're not allowed to say anything around him that we don't want him to absorb. Not that Jason and I shoot swear words around or anything-just we can't have a conversation between us in front of him-because it automatically becomes between the 3 of us-even if he's across the room playing with his cars. Example:

I had this bizarre dream the other day in which Jason rather brutally killed a coyote. I was telling him all about it as Rudy was playing on his own across the room. (I can't help myself but tell Jason about my dreams-especially if they're bizarre/disturbing. Poor guy!)

THE NEXT DAY, after Rudy stomped on an ant and I was telling him about how we need to respect living creatures and not just stomp on them 'cause we're bigger, he turns to me and says, "Daddy killed a coyote."

What?! It took me a bit to understand and remember why he would think such a thing.

A week later, Rudy is still convinced his Daddy is a coyote killer; he brings it up out of the blue about once a day. We've had countless discussions about how dreams are just make believe stories we tell ourselves in our sleep, but Rudy is convinced that this actually happened, because he heard me say it did. Sigh. Luckily, he doesn't seem too terribly traumatized by the idea of his Daddy being a coyote killer. I'm not even sure he knows just what a coyote is. Sigh. I wonder if this is going to be one of those skewed childhood memories that he'll actually create his own 'memory' of, and insist he was there and saw the whole thing happen when he's older.

Apparently, it's time to keep adult conversations between adults-and that means Rudy is not even in the room. Sigh. ;)