So, I was going to make a whole Niblet Theater out of this, but then I realized that really it can be distilled into a few sentences:

I took my child to Home Depot on a mission to purchase a new switch cover plate, a hose nozzle thingy (you know, one of those gun-looking things that screws onto the end of your hose and lets you regulate the flow from a huge fine mist spray to a directed stream with only a squeeze of the handle), and an air pump with which to blow up his swimming pool. The mission was only 2/3 successful (though we did later find a pump elsewhere), but as we searched and searched, I let him ride around on my shoulders. He split the time between looking at things he'd never seen before and asking me what they were, and by running his hands over my cheeks and occasionally saying "bzzzzzzz" and then being surprised that making a buzzing noise didn't seem to remove the fuzz, as my electric shaver does.

And so we tramped through the aisles, brave home-improvement warriors that we are, looking and bzzzing, until absolutely out of nowhere, there near the electrical irrigation system timers, the Niblet declared: "I love you, Dada."

I really will never know why at that moment he felt he loved me. And the next moment he was wondering what some weird hedge-trimming device was. But right then, it was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. One thing that is awesome about having a kid is that I expect that these "best thing that has ever happened to me" moments to continue. At least until he's a teenager.