little headbanger

This morning, as Dennis was in his crib watching the Jungle Book, I assembled a large wooden sandbox and canopy. I began assembly in the house, and when it was time to install the vertical pieces, I carried the base outside, spread weed cloth under it, and finished installation. I was tying the canopy to the frame when I heard this child crying in the distance. I began speculating that I must have new neighbors with a small child, but I couldn't figure out who they were. I tied 2 more knots, and then realized that the crying child was mine. I rushed inside to find him angrily staring at his dvd player and crying loudly (the movie finished and he was bored). I gave him some reassurance, handed him some toys, and ran outside to finish up. I poured in 3 bags of sand and spread it around (3 bags is not enough--I had to buy more tonight) and quickly spread the cover over it since the cat was eyeing my new project with profound interest. When I went in to get Dennis, he was crying again and insisted on clinging to my leg as I changed clothes (not easy). So we didn't play in the sandbox today. I took him to have lunch with Gran and Pop to celebrate Gran's birthday. He said "happy birthday" to her, but not loudly, thank goodness. Our Mexican restaurant has a nasty tradition of singing to birthday victims and then liberally smearing whipped cream on their faces. Mom threatened us, so we kept her birthday on the down low. Not that Dennis paid us much attention at lunch--he flirted with every other person in the restaurant and we mostly saw the back of his head.

After lunch we ran errands with Gran, and the errands netted Dennis a new steering wheel toy, a much louder and more irritating one that the one he destroyed last night. He loves it. He played with it for more than 15 minutes before letting it slide to the floor of the van and saying "uh-oh." And when Pop joined us in the van, he (Pop) played with it for at least that long as well. Totally worth $6.00.

We had birthday dessert at Shoney's, a walnut brownie a la mode for each of us and a little bowl of soft serve vanilla for Dennis. I had to spend a few extra minutes with my Wii Fit tonight! And we managed a visit to the lake this afternoon, and Dennis enjoyed toddling around on the screened porch at Mom's place and the screened-porch-to-be at Becky's. He inspected the new stove plug that was installed at Mom's and I told him not to touch it because it was hot. For the rest of the visit, he would walk over to it and say "hot hot" and walk away.

I started my quest for interesting airplane diversion toys today, and I bought him a Leap Frog Little Touch pad (because I found a lot of cartridges and books for it on the clearance rack at Wal-Mart). Whenever he turns a page, it reads the story and invites him to touch the different things on the page and describes what they are. There are songs and rhymes to go along with the basic story. We put the batteries in it and turned him loose with it in his carseat, and we heard vigorous page flipping for several minutes, but no story being read. I will have to show him how it works, but he should enjoy it because he loves to point to things in books and have me tell him what they are. The pages are guaranteed to be baby proof, and so far so good, but it looked like someone had ironed wrinkles into the pages of the book--they've since flattened back out. At any rate, he enjoyed flipping the pages until we heard him drop it and say "uh-oh."

Tonight after dinner, when we were leaving, the hostess in the restaurant asked us if Dennis could walk. We set him down, and he ran around the room. Everyone tells us he looks too little to be able to walk and they are always amazed when they see those powerful little legs churning. He's quicker every day!

Important new skill today: gargling. We didn't teach him this. He tried it with milk, and when he was finished gargling it noisily, he spit it out all over his shirt and carseat straps. Very gross. He, of course, thought it was hysterical and laughed accordingly. He can now tell you what the cow says ("mmmmmm") and what the sheep says ("bah"). He said "shoe" a lot today and kept grabbing his shoes as he did it. He started doing a weird thing today. He bobs his head a lot. He looks like a little head banger. Not sure why he's doing it, but several of the times I noticed it, he was doing it in response to music. Sometimes there was no music. He also likes to look up and then whip his head straight down. I guess he's just learning how his head works, and how things look when he moves certain ways. It's cute, but weird. Maybe he's a rock star in his mind.