wishing for snow already

This morning I was greeted with "good morning, Mommy. You need to brush your teeth." Nice. I immediately ran my tongue over my teeth, trying to detect anything gross and failing. It must have been my breath. A little later, we were playing in the living room and he suddenly ran back into his bedroom. He came back in seconds, sporting his yellow toboggan cap with one ear flap over his eye (his apparent preferred method of wearing a winter hat). He said "it snowed, Mommy, I need my mittens and shoes". The shoes he brought were sandals, so I told him he really needed some snow boots. He said "yeah, snow boots" and then said "I can't open the closet, the snow boots are in there". I went to open it and saw only one snow boot. He said "where the other one?" and I told him to find it and went back to the living room. He appeared a few minutes later with his Crocs (must have given up on the search) and said "I wear Snow Crocs" and proceeded to put them on the wrong feet then said "I ready to go".

We've had to call Poison Control today--he came to us carrying an open bottle of calcium tablets, saying "I eat one" and with white goo around his mouth. No harm done, and at least it was calcium. Now we are on our way to see Jennifer and Hadden and the babies and to celebrate a special occasion with Dennis' first visit to a Japanese steak house (which should give me plenty to write about tomorrow). Happy birthday, Hadden! Dennis is currently amusing himself in the back seat, and he is pointing out clouds. We were both shocked a minute ago when he said "look at that cloud, Mommy, it's shaped like a turtle" and then "that looks like a elephant" and "look at the seahorse in the sky" and "there's a kite cloud". Neither of us have played the cloud game with him yet--we tried it half a year ago and he wasn't interested--and we looked at each other in wonder and then David revealed that the dragons on Dragon Tales played the cloud game. Aha! I spent an hour this morning praying about ways to help him develop his incredible brain, feeling some guilt about the tv shows he's watched lately, and now I found out he's actually learning. He sang Old MacDonald in its entirety and then sang the first half of the Thomas the Train opening song--he sang "they're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight, shunting trucks and hauling freight, red and green and brown and blue, they're the really useful crew". That's a pretty decent memory developing in his little head. I'm such a proud Mommy!