We've been telling the same story for a few months now. Every night, after we talk about the day, it finds its way back to frogs. Always frogs.
The story goes like this. One day, we were driving to grandma and grandpa's house and it was raining. When we got there, grandpa came down with his umbrella so we wouldn't get wet. And when he opened it, a frog jumped out. Right into the car. It came to say hello.
Grandpa tried to catch it, gently, so it wouldn't get stuck. But the frog got scared and jumped under the car. So we crouched down in the rain to look at it hiding under the car.
That's where the story ends. But Tyson keeps adding to it. The frog was tiny and so cute. He wanted to pick it up. He wanted to hug it and give it a kiss.
And then afterwards, we lie in the dark and listen for the real frogs outside the window. Before he falls asleep.
I'm not sure how it started. But if I had to trace it back, it would probably be to swimming lessons.
It started with a song.
We began swimming lessons when Tyson was three months old, and at some point they introduced Galumph Went the Little Green Frog. I don't know exactly when it became his favourite, but it did. In the water we would lift him and lower him with the rhythm of it, sway him side to side, and he loved it in that whole-body way that babies love things. We brought it home and started doing the actions at home.
For a while that was enough. A song. A sound. A small green word he carried around.
Then he started walking and the world got bigger. At my parents' house there was a pond, and in the warmer months there were always frogs living in the bucket they kept for the garden. Every visit, he would grab someone's hand and drag them over to lift the lid. How many were there today? Were they the same ones? We would crouch down together and look for as long as he wanted to look.
My mum started calling frogs op op (the Thai word for the sound they make) and sending him little videos of herself with frog figurines, op op, op op. He would watch them over and over. For a while he called all frogs op op before he had the English word for them. Three generations of us, crouching down around the same small creature.
It was around this time I thought I would try to make him a book. Something that could extend his world a little further. We would read it together and talk about the colours, about which ones were dangerous, listen to the sounds they make on my phone. He loved that some frogs are tiny and some are as big as cats. He loved the bright ones, the strange ones, the ones that didn't look real.
And then one rainy morning at my parents' house, grandpa came down to the car with an umbrella, and a frog jumped out. And that became the story we tell every night now, months later, still adding to it, and now with Tyson helping to tell the story too.
He can make so many different frog sounds now. Not just op op.
I didn't set out to give him a world. I was just paying attention to what he already loved. The book didn't create the obsession, it joined something that was already alive between us. And now we have tadpoles at home in a frog pond we made together, and every night we lie in the dark and listen for the real frogs outside the window before he falls asleep.
I think that's what the book is really about. Not frogs. Attention. The particular kind that says: I see what you love. And I love it too, because you do.