Dylan loves Fox in Socks, but he can't read more than a few pages without falling asleep. He gets all the ticks and clocks, sir, mixed up with the chicks and tocks, sir, and the mental strain knocks him out, sir.

Speaking of strain, Isaac is straining his neck lately in order to see things of interest to him. He went to the Popular Cafe in Whetstone this morning.

DYLAN: I want to go to Whetstone. I don't see a stone there. Maybe some people put the stone in a rubbish bin, because it's wet.

Dylan has assigned the following parts from The Cat in the Hat series:

The Cat in the Hat... Dylan.
The Narrator... Mummy.
The Fish... Daddy.
Little Cat A... Isaac.

As the Cat, Dylan uses a deep voice to plan mischief while Daddy, as the Fish, expresses worry and concern. Nana and Papa make cameo appearances as 'Little Cat C' and 'Sally'.

Sometimes in the middle of the night Dylan goes up the People's Stairs in order to sleep with Daddy. Other nights he spends in his own bed. In the morning, if Dylan has spent the entire night in his own bed, then Daddy rewards him with a 'letter sticker', or a merit sticker featuring words of praise and encouragement.

How we got into this messy situation, an honours scandal with bribery, is another story, long and uninteresting, which shows Daddy's parenting skills in a poor light. The point here is that Dylan sleeps in his own bed on a strictly voluntary basis.

Last night, after Daddy tucked Dylan into the correct bed, Dylan said, 'Oh, by the way, Daddy'. (Daddy had never heard Dylan use the phrase 'by the way' before, so this was amusing.)

'Yes, Dyan?' asked Daddy.

'I don't want a letter sticker', announced Dylan, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. This was Dylan's way of saying, 'I'll be seeing you at 3.00 a.m., sucker'.

Dylan has taken a pump hose into his room, which he uses to run his own car washing business, where he pretends to wash the windows of cars that we pretend to drive, and then pretends to accept money from us for the service.

Dylan has joined The Wheels on the Bus with Johnny Cash, singing 'the ring of fire burns... all day long!'