THREE!

He played happily here today until we decided to head to the lake house to spiff it up in preparation for the arrival of The Godfather. When we got to the lake house, he happily played in his car for 10 minutes or so, and then he walked around and fussed at me for the rest of the hour that we were there. He fussed when I cleaned up his toys, and he fussed when I stopped him from sending the DirecTV remote on a ride in the toilet. He followed right on my tail until I turned on the vacuum cleaner. I didn't mean to startle him, honest, but the vacuum was already turned on when I plugged it in, and I admit that it startled me, too, when it came on. His eyes got so wide, and he ran across the room, stood behind a chair, and started wailing. He's seen a vacuum before, even that particular vacuum, but I think it upset him when it turned on while he was standing right next to it. He stared hatefully at the vacuum while I cleaned the carpet, still looking a little worried, crying just a little. I had a hard time not laughing. That sounds excessively cruel, I know, but he'd been driving me crazy following me and grabbing my pant leg and fussing at me while I was trying to straighten, and he'd been messing up whatever I cleaned as I cleaned it. I put the videos on the shelf, he removed them and tossed them in the floor. I put his toys in the cabinet, he opened the cabinet and flung toys around the room. I went in the bathroom to put the towels away, and he immediately opened the toilet lid and stuck his hands in. The vacuum afforded me the first peace I'd had since we got there.

Lest you think we don't vacuum at home... We actually have a Roomba, the robot vacuum, and it isn't quite as loud or as large as a regular vacuum, and Dennis has seen it, chased it, been bumped by it, and now ignores it. It runs while he's asleep and doesn't wake him up, and it doesn't bother him when he sees it running when he's awake. He just hasn't seen us actively engaged with a vacuum lately because we haven't had to be (much to our delight).

After an intense 45 minutes of cleaning and fussing, we thought that maybe he was hungry, so David gave him a piece of cheese. I saw cheese sitting on the counter, so the next time he came over to me to cry, I put a bite of cheese in his mouth. He pulled it back out of his mouth and yelled louder, and when I went to take it away from him before he tossed it onto my freshly vacuumed floor, he cried even harder. Then he put it back in his mouth, gave me a dirty look, one serious "waaah!" (which I translated to mean, "I wanted the cheese. So there. But you didn't have to take so darn long to give it to me. I'm still mad."), and walked away eating.

I decided he needed some attention when he kept trying to destroy the touch lamp in the bedroom. So I picked him up, and he cried, and I began bouncing him up and down, and counting "one, two.........THREE!". At three, I tossed him lightly onto the bed. He stopped mid-cry and began giggling uncontrollably. We did this several times, with me counting each time. Then it was time to leave, and the exit door is through the other bedroom. When we were walking by the other bed, Dennis stood there, held up his arms, looked at me, and said "THREEEEE!!!". So I bounced him again, of course. And then we rushed him to Zaxby's for dinner, and all was well. He even helped me clean his room tonight, actually putting his birds and books back on the shelf. He put a bird on the shelf, tentatively, and I praised him effusively. So he put the other birds up and a few books, all the while clapping his hands and saying "yaaaaay". Then he went to his crib and said "nye nye" and we put him to bed.