McKay the Handy Manning

Grandma: This is a true story for you about how much McKay loves his Christmas tools.

McKay walks into my room. He has a little piece of scrap wood and his power drill and jig saw in his hands. He throws them on the bed, and uses the chair to climb on up. He seats himself in the middle of the bed with his wood cradled in his lap.

"Wood!" he yells. "Saw? saw? Hed it go?!"

"I don't know McKay. Here's your drill."

"Saw? Find it!" Jjrrrr goes the saw on the wood.

I sit on the chair next to the bed, watching him and kind of checking my email at the same time. He stops, looks up at me very seriously, "Ammer."

"Oh." I say. I must be the assistant. "I'll go get your hammer. It's in your room."  I get his hammer and hand it to him. With the hammer in his one hand and the saw in the other, you hear "Jjrrr. tap tap tap. Jjrrrrr. tap tap."

After another minute, he looks up, and says, "fi fies." That's my cue that he needs his screwdriver. Obligingly I return to his room and come back with a screwdriver. He does a number on the wood with the screwdriver, then grabs his drill. "Drill." Vrrooom!

All of a sudden, he gets up, leaving the little piece of wood in the middle of my bed. He grabs a tool or two, demands my "ands!" and pulls me to his room. "Ah-down." So I sit. He picks up another tool--a wrench of some sort--and begins all over again, moving from tool to tool, on the wooden toy shelf in his room. (It's a good thing the shelf only cost me a couple dollars and an hour to make.)

There's no question. This little curly-haired strawberry blond is Burke's son.