OBSERVED: The World According to Lyric

I can recount just about every detail from April 26, 2008. From the panic in my wife’s voice as she screamed for me to wake up because her water broke at 4 a.m. to the beeps and blips of all the machines in the hospital nursery, I can close my eyes at any time and transport myself back to that day.

I still remember sitting there, in awe of the tiny life identified by the hospital as Baby Boy Eng.

Next week, our son, Lyric, will turn 3 years old.

Where does the time go?

For sure, it has passed. I have new gray hairs and pains in weird parts of my body to prove it. Still, it baffles me that I’ve blinked, and three years have flown by.

In the months before April 26, 2008, I thought constantly about how my wife and I were the ones responsible for introducing this new soul to the world. How everything, everything, would be new to him. How acts as mundane as turning your head or putting one foot in front of the other were bold adventures.

What I didn’t anticipate was how this incredible soul would turn my world topsy-turvy with his own ideas and expressions.

So, in honor of our big boy’s third birthday — and to record these memories before I blink again — I am offering the first edition of “The World According to Lyric.”

1. The word “yellow” is spelled “Y-E-ELEVEN-O-W.”

2. To use a tape measure, place it on the floor. Extend the tape up toward the sky to grab a star. Bring it back down carefully and give that star to Mommy or Daddy. Or sister Aria. Sometimes.

3. Jupiter is the biggest planet in the solar system. It also is an adjective synonymous with “large.” As in: “Daddy has a big head. Daddy has a Jupiter head.”

4. A telephone is a small rectangle with a touch screen on one side and a picture of an apple on the other. It has tons of games to play.

5. The number 100 is the next numeral after 20.

6. Anything that has occurred in the past happened “yesterday.” Or “yestertime.”

7. Whenever Daddy is going to work, he’s going to take pictures. That’s all he does at work.

8. Hockey is a sport in which you take a baseball bat and hit a baseball along the ground back and forth with one of your parents. To do so is to “hock.”

9. Lowe’s Home Improvement is also known as the “Blue Depot.”

10. Every toy in the house belongs to “Lyric” or “Not Aria.”