firsts

Raising a child means experiencing a lot of "firsts", something I didn't much think about when we decided to bring Dennis into the world. Sure, I expected first words, first steps, first day of school, all those kinds of things, but the smaller firsts are awfully rewarding as well. Last night, for instance, he did something pretty neat. He told me he wanted to go to Gigi's house today. She's about to be leaving on a big trip, so I had to tell him we couldn't, and he asked "well, can we send a letter to her mailbox?". I thought this was a great idea, even more great when I found out that he wanted to write the letter himself (his first letter!). He had to ask which letters to use to make it say what he wanted it to say (To Gigi I love you love Dennis), and it took him both sides of a sheet of paper to write his message, but he did it entirely on his own. He's very into writing now, and tonight after he read a couple of his BOB books to me, he insisted on writing the words he'd read. He decided to try writing a few numbers as well, and I just watched in amazement. Then he drew a Dennis (he likes to draw himself), and it's nice that the people he draws are actually recognizable as people.

Today we played our first game of hopscotch. We took the sidewalk chalk outside to enjoy the pretty non-November-ish afternoon, and he wrote letters and traced his handprint. Then he asked if we could "draw a hopscotch", so I accommodated him as he supervised ("now you draw a bunch of squares and you write numbers in them--I will go and find some rocks"). I'm pleased that he knows what the game is and how to play it given that it's been a few years since I have played! The dog invaded our hopscotch game, so it became more of a hopscotch obstacle course, but we had a good laugh at any rate.

There were, as usual, some humorous things he said. He asked if it was Christmas Eve yet (except he said "Christmas Een"), and I explained that we still had to get through Thanksgiving. He sighed heavily and said "grrrrrrrrr--I hate Thanksgiving!". I asked why and he said "it's getting in the way of Christmas." And he also told me that he wanted to be a "vampire pilgrim" for Thanksgiving (once he decided he didn't hate it anymore). I'm curious to see how this pans out. And when I was on the computer earlier to check email, he was irritated that he didn't have my full attention and so took off his socks and tossed them onto the computer keyboard. Yuck. He knows how I love dirty socks. Finally, tonight as I was tucking him in, I told him I loved him even when he was being a little monster (like he was today), and he said "and I love you even when you are a BIG monster and I love Daddy even when he's a BIGGER monster." I think he'll probably spend the rest of the night inventing excuses to get out of bed--he just wandered in to tell us that he needs a night night snack and a special night night drink. And then he said he was cold, went to my winter gear drawer, pulled out a scarf, put it on, and ran as we chased him to get it back. He says it's a superhero cape (and has the ends dangling down his back). Might be a long night.

Today he was thankful for "the firemen who spray out the fires and rescue the people."