Blabbermouth

Dennis talked nonstop today. He started in at breakfast, commenting on the speed with which I brought food to the high chair. He ate some applesauce and cereal, and some flavored rice puffs. About halfway through the food, he decided he was finished and threw a puff onto the floor and yelled out something that sounded like "haaa eeeeee". Then he looked intently at the entrance to the kitchen. He yelled it again. I looked behind me, didn't see anything, and then I realized what he was doing. I yelled out "Honey", he repeated it "ha eeee", and our golden retriever, Honey, came running into the kitchen to eat what he'd dropped.

We had a van picnic for lunch today, as in, we met Gran at the gas station to get fried chicken, and we ate it sitting in her van while it was parked at the gas station. Dennis sat in a regular seat with a lap belt over him while we ate, and he must have felt like a grownup to be out of his carseat for a bit. Sounds strange, but one of the gas stations in town has the best fried chicken and potato wedges of anywhere around. Is it a southern thing, gas station fried chicken? Good stuff, at any rate. I also bought some moon pies (yes, southern, I know, but I didn't get an RC). Dennis had a corn dog. I handed him part of the hot dog from inside the corndog, and he said "hot hot". It was actually not hot, so I'm presuming that's dennispeak for hot dog. Cute.

We bought a new carseat for Gran's van today, and he waited not patiently at all while I installed it. He did enjoy the shopping trip to Wal-Mart, though, grabbing spice jars off the shelf and walking exactly where he wanted to walk. He made some new friends this way, and I got a nice tour of the meat cooler section, following him around while he touched the packages of bacon, sausage, and hot hots. Post Wal-Mart, we spent the day at Gran's, where he filed some important papers for Gran (read: transferred from manila folder to floor, for easier reading). We played outside in the garden, checking out the fish pond, waving to the fish and yelling "hey" to them over and over. We loaded some pea gravel in the Tonka dump truck, and unloaded it, and reloaded it, and unloaded it... We went for a wagon ride around the block and then learned how to put the sippy cup back in the cupholder on the high chair after we finished drinking from it. We made brownies, while Dennis cruised the kitchen and said "hey doggie" over and over to Max, Lady, and Sniffles, as he could see them through the storm door. He patted Lady very nicely and chased Tiffany around the house trying to give her equal attention (she was having none of it). He tried to eat and drink from the dog bowls, but we managed to stop him in time and redirect him to open cabinets and grab pots and pans and other assorted items. We opened and closed his plastic Easter eggs, putting them in the bucket and dumping them out repeatedly. We played patty-cake over and over and over, and he's actually starting to clap his own hands instead of trying to clap ours for us. It was a busy day, with an agenda entirely determined by Dennis. I wonder what he has planned for tomorrow.