bad boo boo

Last night, Gran presented Dennis with a little gourd that she picked up at the gourd festival last weekend. She told him he could paint a face on it, and he couldn't wait to get started. Today he gave it a base coat, mostly black with occasional splashes of red, blue, green, and yellow, and we will paint a face on it when it dries. He says our library is his special artist room.

Tonight we had dinner with Gran and Pop, spending a little time with them before they leave on vacation tomorrow. Just after we got there, Dennis tripped and fell on the threshold between the den and the garage, slicing his palm on an exposed carpet tack. He cried buckets, wailing pitifully for a Band-Aid. Pop and I thought he needed some New Skin since he sliced his hand right along a crease in the palm. He just wanted a Band-Aid, but Pop came up with the brilliant idea of calling the New Skin 'Super Hero Glue'. Dennis held out his hand for it and screamed a lot when it was applied. He got over it quickly enough, though, telling us he was a Transformer and his name was Broken Hand.

We picked out our carving pumpkin tonight but didn't get to the main event yet. He did get very excited when I brought the decorations in from the storage building, frantically running to and fro and saying "hurry, Mommy, we need to decorate some more!". He dug out David's Dracula cape (the one I sewed for him back in college--black satin lined with red satin) and went and draped it over David. Then he plopped a witch hat onto David's head and stood back to admire his handiwork. He said "look--Daddy's a witch! Dad, I think you need a broom." David said "no, Dennis" and he said "no, call me Halloween Dennis."

We put him to bed after that and after re-bandaging his hand (he kept pulling his Band-Aids off). David told him to hold his hand over his heart so that he wouldn't mess with his Band-Aid anymore. He said "I can't hold my hand over my heart. My manners are in my heart. I don't want to break them. If my manners are broken, I'll be broken and you and Daddy will have to fix me." I took all this in, blinked once, opened my mouth to speak, and then he asked "Could you and Daddy build another one of me?". I told him we love the one we have already, and he said "I want you to build another Dennis. I need a Robot Dennis." Whatever would we do with a robot Dennis? I'm sure he could think of dozens of things!