delight

One of my favorite things about Dennis (and as you can imagine, there are many) is his seemingly endless capacity for finding sheer delight in the simplest of things. This might be a trait that is not unique to Dennis--it might be something common among the 2 year old set--but it never fails to make me smile. He gets overjoyed by the most common things and elicits those wonderful big baby belly laughs or high pitched screeches of delight accompanied by the biggest of smiles, mouth open wide, eyes smiling as well.

Today he was just delighted with the word "Tuesday", laughing as he said it. He also proudly identified the night noises outside his window as tree frogs and was over the moon when I told him how right he was. Goldfish crackers and spaghetti and hearing a train whistle all rev up his joy level. A visit to Gran and Pop or Grandma and Bob or Uncle Denny causes great happiness. Actually, just telling him that we're going to go and see them or the Gallmans or Allison has a big effect. And going to the park may be the most fun thing in his known repertoire (after the train ride, of course), and I told him we were going this morning. On the way there, I thought we'd stop for a minute and show off his new haircut to his Gran and Granny and he noticed we were detouring from the route to the playground and said "NO! Want to go slide and swing-y". We got into Gran's house and he turned to the door and burst into big fat tears (which completely dried up when he saw his Gran and Granny). We only stayed a minute and then got back into the car, where he announced that he was "ready to go slide and swing-y park".

Imagine my dismay when I drove to the park and discovered it was CLOSED!! The gates were chained and locked and there were workmen constructing a new pavilion there on the new playground. Dennis couldn't understand why we were leaving and repeated his mantra again and again on our drive to the playground in the next town to the north. Once we arrived, he looked around delighted and announced "RIDE FROG!!" because this park had those rocking animals to ride, and he tried them all. Again he was afraid to slide and I feared that maybe a fear of heights had kicked in (or his sense of danger may be starting to emerge). Once I slid down the slide, he was all for it and he directed me "up the stairs, Mommy" and "down slide, Mommy" and we climbed and slid until he was tired and ready to go home. We went walking later and he identified each flower by color and pointed out every bird, squirrel, and truck that he saw. It was a very delightful day for both of us!