animal farm

Noteworthy items from today:

1. Dennis is now talking on his cell phone. He walks around with it held up to his ear and he talks to it. Granted, the times I've observed him doing this, the phone is turned backward with the screen facing out, but he's clearly observed some adults talking on their cell phones, and he's talked on a few phones himself. His play phone is a purple glitter Motorola Razor, because Mommy and Daddy have Motorola Razors, and the only phone we could find like ours was located in the Barbie accessory department. David is planning to buy him a cover for it, not because we hate purple glitter, but because David keeps his phone (which is NOT purple glitter) in a case, and Dennis likes to be like Daddy.

2. Since he's starting to pretend and imitate, we bought a Fisher Price Little People playset for him, one with farm animals and a barn and silo. The barn makes sounds when you put the animals in their spots (i.e., the barn oinks when you open the gate to the pig's mudhole, another gate moos and neighs depending on which side you open, etc.). He likes it very much and has gotten the ultimate enjoyment out of it thus far. He climbed on the box while the set was still in it, and he played with each animal as I untangled it from the parent-proof toy packaging. I'm still new at this toy-buying stuff, so I naturally forgot to buy batteries. Dave and Ellen were courteous enough to bring some, so when Dennis got up from his nap, the set that he'd been playing so well with before started moo-ing and baa-ing and oinking and neighing and cock-a-doodle-ing at him, so he had to spend more time experimenting with it. A Little People video came with it (it does not, surprisingly, feature midgets), a cute claymation collection of stories about the Little People in the playsets. Dennis was so surprised that the Farmer Jed and cow he was holding in his hands were also on the tv.

3. He showed his first little hint of possessiveness today, when Chloe came crawling for his cup of chocolate milk. He gave a short little warning screech, and she backed off for a millisecond. I took the cup away from them both. They did manage to eat their crackers separately, if a bit messily. He forgave her quickly enough (after all, he did try to get her juice cup a number of times), and they spent happy minutes together banging on the glass storm door to the screened porch. They would slap the glass with their hands, look at each other, then giggle and bang again. Then Dennis tried to shut the door and smash Chloe between the door and the screen door. I think he wanted to show her how fun it was to open and close the door, but she didn't move out of the way. He never closed it all the way, fortunately, but he didn't seem to understand why she didn't want to play open/close/open/close/open with him.

4. Dennis said "cow" and "moo" and "dog" and "barbecue" and "bean" and "thank you" and "home" today. And I was able to reason with him in the car. He tossed his pacifier and after a while began screeching for it, and I explained to him that he was the one that threw it and that I was driving and couldn't help him at the moment. I told him he had two choices. He could suck on any of the 10 fingers he had handy, or he could wait until we got home and I could fetch his pacifier. He chewed quietly on a finger for 15 minutes before whining again, and we had the same conversation a second time. He quieted immediately, and was peaceful and happy the rest of the way home.

5. Ellen introduced the babies to a snake today. We loaded them in their big jogging strollers and took off on a walk, down to the marina and up the road on the other side. There was a tiny garter snake in the road, and we gave him (her?) a wide berth, and then we thought the kids should see it. We turned the strollers around, and they weren't noticing it, so Ellen grabbed a handy branch and prodded it while telling the kids to never, ever do this. He started to slither, and the babies watched, and Ellen prodded again and he started striking, and he moved a little faster than she anticipated and got a little close to her ankle. She screamed LOUDLY, so I think the babies probably got the message that snakes are scary. The snake got the message that people are scary and slithered way away from us. We walked until we came to this giant hill and decided immediately to quit, but thought better of it and pushed those heavy babies and strollers up the steep grade. When we got to the top, we decided to go on back down it instead of going down the other side and having to climb it again. The kids seemed to enjoy the walk, and Dennis talked and yelled the whole way back. There's a nice echo at the lake, and Dennis enjoys yelling and hearing an echo.

6. We kept Dennis out way past his bedtime for a dinner date (Cracker Barrel, our family favorite) and some shopping. He was so sweet even though we knew he was exhausted. So we bought another Little People playset for him, this one of Noah's Ark. He likes his wooden ark shape sorter, but the animals and people are two dimensional, so we got him this one to play with as well. Noah and the animals are three dimensional, but they've been plumped and rounded and shortened into extreme cuteness. We hope he'll like playing with it, too. We're going to leave one playset here and one at the lake. And, when he flies next month, he'll be discovering a Little People plane for the first time (with only one passenger to fling about--I'll be hiding the others) when we board our plane.

It was a good day. It always is.