mellow yellow

Another day spent mostly in Dennis's room. This is why I don't get anything done around the house. His room is the safest for him to play in with the most activities for him to do, but I don't like the idea of just leaving him anywhere unsupervised, so I spent my time in his room as well. I should just baby proof the rest of the house, I suppose. It's been easiest to play in his room because he is somewhat caged. With the open floor plan of our house, I'd never know where he was if we turned him loose! We do have lots of fun in his room, but he asks more and more frequently to go "outside" while reaching for his doorknob.

We played lots of things today, and we worked on our animal sounds. He's getting pretty good at this, reliably saying "moo" and "baa" and "quack" for horse, sheep, and duck, and he's 100% on "who who" for owl. He likes playing with his farm, and today, he carefully placed all the animals in their stalls before taking his arm and raking the entire business off his play table and onto the floor. Maybe it was a Little Earthquake for the Little People? He quickly resumed playing with it on the floor, so I don't know if he was trying to be able to reach it better or keep it away from me (since I was the one playing with it first today). Maybe he was just clearing off his table because he likes to stand on it so much.

Whatever gene it is on the Y chromosome that makes little boys drive their cars all over everything has really expressed itself in Dennis in the past week. He rolls his toy cars and tractor across the floor, up the wall, over the doorknob, on the glass on the front of the entertainment center... And the thing that tickles us the most? Now he plays with his cars while lying on his stomach on the floor, rolling them on the floor while his feet occasionally alternately kick up and down. Mostly it's the left foot, bent at the knee, that raises and lowers and waves about, and he looks so grown up when he's on the floor like that. David always plays with him like this, and we wonder if that's where he got it. Possibly. Or maybe he's just discovered that it's a nice comfy way to lie while rolling your cars around.

This morning we were reading our Hawaiian shirt book of colors, and he seems to be beginning to understand the concept of colors. I showed him blue in the book and blue on his carpet and blue on his train table, and he repeated "boo", but he really got excited about yellow. We went around his room pointing out the things that are yellow (Winnie the Pooh, his giraffes, his Tonka truck, his smiley face ball), and he walked around saying "yellow" very distinctly. He didn't seem much interested in red yet, but he can say "geen" for green. At lunch, he ate yellow macaroni and cheese (with a fork much of the time!) and green pears (though white when cut in pieces), and he loved every single colorful bite.

And the last milestone to report today: he learned to dip his nacho chips! We met Pop at a Mexican place for dinner tonight, and while we waited on our meal, I put a few chips in front of Dennis to appease him, and he held up a chip and waved it. I told him he could eat it, and again, he raised and lowered it while looking at me. Suddenly it occurred to me that we were dipping our chips in salsa and he wanted to do it too. So I passed the salsa and he dipped his chip, and then he sucked all the salsa off the chip and dipped it again while David tried to explain the policy of double dipping and why it's wrong. The chip ended up serving as a salsa and cheese dip spoon and was a soggy mess when he finally got around to eating it. He had a great time at the restaurant, which is decorated much like the Small World ride at Disney's Magic Kingdom (VERY colorful). And he was happy all the way home, trying out an extensive range of vocalizations which included grunts and screeches and many syllables (some even English ones). He kept us entertained, for sure, and we couldn't help but join in when he giggled. He was pleasant today, and fun, and the day was mostly tantrum free. No big fusses, but a small one when we insisted on holding his hand in the parking lot while he wanted to run free, but he didn't fight us too much and was happy once we got inside. It was a good day. It helped that he was so sleepy from last night that he took two and a half decent naps. I am still tired and cranky, but he's just fine. I can't wait for him to wake up tomorrow (as long as it's past 8) and discover the toy shopping cart I assembled for him tonight, complete with toy groceries, all sitting beside his bedroom door and waiting for him to wake up and see it.