little keymaster

Today Dennis tried to break his staying awake record. I think he's been up more hours than me today. He resisted the morning nap, so we went on to Gran's house to have lunch with her. He played happily in her den, knocking over the block towers we built and saying "boom" as they fell. He growled as he approached the towers. I suppose he was playing dinosaur again today. He did the neatest thing today. He picked up a key ring from the ottoman, rotated the keys around, said "keys", and then pulled out one key from the ring, gripped it in his fingers (just as I would), looked up at the door, and began walking over to it with the key aimed right at the doorknob. I told his Gran to look, look, look, and sure enough, he touched the key right to the knob. If it had been an outside door, I would not have been surprised to see him put the key in the lock! I must report, this is a skill he picked up strictly by watching. We did not teach him this at all! Shortly after amazing us with his key skills, we watched him walk over to the door leading to the sunroom and the garden. He said "outside", reached up, turned the knob, and opened the door. He looked back to see if we were coming as well, so we followed him out there and looked at the fish and the flowers and the trees.

His Gran wants me to report the other skill he learned today. I made brownies this afternoon when Gran and I needed a chocolate fix. I passed the batter bowl to her so she could scrape out and eat the batter remnants. Dennis stuck his fingers in the bowl, and he learned to lick each finger individually to get the batter off. He had a fudge mustache and beard for a while, and he sure got angry when I went to wipe his face! My kid loves chocolate. I'm so proud.

He didn't nap well at Gran's, so he finally collapsed at the lake for a long one, which delayed his bedtime a good bit. He finally went down at 10 pm, and I'm real curious to see what time he wakes up tomorrow. He treated his crib like it was prison tonight, and I had to go in and get him and rock him for a bit before putting him back down. Right now I can hear hard pacifier sucking on the baby monitor, so I suppose he's drifted off to baby dreamland and all is right with the world again. Kind of gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think about it!