antics

He was feeling better most of today, but had fever again tonight. I'm sure now that it's a cold. Low grade fever, congestion, runny nose... If he's not improved by Monday or Tuesday, we'll see the doc. He was certainly feeling good enough to play, and we did plenty of that. We met Gran and Gigi for lunch and he had a fun time with them.

I suppose I'm going to have to figure out some form of discipline soon. He was a riot at supper tonight, and he kept doing funny but bad things. He emptied his bowl of black-eyed peas onto his high chair tray and then smashed the peas with the bottom of the bowl. He turned the bowl upside down on his head, thereby getting pea goop all in his hair and eyebrows. He tossed his cup in the floor repeatedly, and then would point down to it and say "Jooosh" (juice). And he did the same to his corn-on-the-cob, dropping it and then saying "kohn" (corn). The spoon hit the floor a few times as well. I debated not picking them up, but I still can't tell if it was deliberate or not. When he finishes drinking, he drops the cup, but he doesn't look to make sure where he's putting it because he's already focused on what he's going to pick up next. Same with the corn and spoon. The bowl thing was an experiment, I could tell. He was looking at me to see if I would laugh along with him, and I had to turn away so he wouldn't see me cracking up. It was FUNNY, but I don't want to encourage him to continue it. So he'd do something, I'd have to turn around and laugh, then turn back to him and ask him in all seriousness why he did it. Difficult. Made me feel like a parent.

We are having conversations now. He says the most elaborate gibberish, and says it so seriously that I of course answer, and the conversations continue. Many times I have no idea what we're talking about, but today we had the following little talk:

Dennis: "MEH-MEH" (this means mama, we think)

Me: "Yes, dear?"

Dennis: "See?" (points to refrigerator)

Me: "Yes, what do you see?"

Dennis: "Koh-wee"

Me: "okay...?"

Dennis: "Koh-wee"

Me: (looking at refrigerator) "Oh. Chloe? Yes, that Chloe's baby picture right there."

Dennis: "Baby"

Me: "Yes, Baby. Very good, Dennis."

Today when we were looking at the pictures from Michael and Kristin, Dennis looked up from his snack, saw the picture on the computer, and said "Mwehwa" (which is his word for Mirella) without us saying her name first. I'm so proud that he recognized her! And then tonight in his room, we were singing Old MacDonald (Dennis likes to sing "EE-Yie-EE-Yo-Yu" (for E-I-E-I-O), and this resulted in us making animal sounds. I said "who who", and Dennis said "owl" then went and picked up his owl off the shelf and brought it to me, saying "who who" over and over. He handed it to me and said "owl", so I squeezed the owl and made it hoot for him. The owl was sitting with all his other birds, and I am so amazed that he knew which bird to bring, and even more amazed that he can say owl. He's saying new and surprising words every day, and I can't believe how fast he's learning things. He's like a little sponge, asking what things are and then repeating them. And more than anything, he wants to sing. Whenever we sing kid songs (itsy-bitsy spider, old macdonald, a-b-c, twinkle twinkle, wheels on the bus, etc.), he stares at us entranced, and he moves his mouth along with us, trying to understand how to sing. It's the most precious thing. We have talked about getting a cd of kids singing songs (oh, how we hate those things) for all of us to sing along to, because we know he'd love it. I'll take any recommendations on which of those is the least annoying, by the way.

Dennis is a shoe bandit. Shoe is one of his favorite words, and if he sees shoes lying around, he'll grab them. The picture shows him with his Daddy's Crocs, which he likes to try on. He had just tried them on, walked out of them, and then picked them up and brought them over to David, saying "Daddy! Shoe!". We used to have to worry about the dogs relocating our shoes, but now we have a new shoe mover in town!