road buddy

Dennis came with me today as I gave a friend a ride from Helena to Montgomery, where she met up with her sister to take her the rest of the way to Dothan. Their mother has been in the hospital for two months, but is doing much better, but my friend lives in Pelham and has been going back and forth between the two places. This time she'll be buying a car down there and didn't want to take an extra one with her, and we were happy to give her a ride. Dennis loves her little dachshund, Sadie, who came with us on the journey. He was much better about the car ride today than he has been of late. We left the house before 9 am, and he was a little sleepy on the way north and didn't have much to say. On our way south, he got chatty and started the Pacifier Olympics (tossing it everywhere but where he needed it), and then was just a touch fussy when it passed his naptime and he was still in the car and still awake. He was very pleased to discover that our drop off point was a McDonald's, though, and was somewhat mollified by chicken mcnuggets, apple slices, and an opportunity to play in the indoor Playplace. There was another child there, a boy a couple of years older than Dennis who mentored him in learning the bottom level equipment in that particular Playplace. The steps leading up to the high level hamster tube play equipment were a bit tall for both children and neither attempted the climb. I found this to be fortunate, because I have a bit of claustrophobia about these places and dread the day I will have to climb all the way up in those tiny tubes to fetch my child. I have now been in one (at the children's museum last week), but it was pretty low and fairly large inside (it was a connector hub for two tubes) and not too intimidating. They never give a weight rating on those tubes, either. I like to know that what I'm climbing up won't collapse on me because I weigh considerably more than the average 2 to 5 year old.

He slept all the way home from Montgomery, slept so hard that his pacifier was hanging onto his lips by mere millimeters, maybe glued there by some leftover drool that had congealed on the silicone surface of the pacifier. It fell out of his mouth once, and he blinked awake, grabbed it, reinserted it, and promptly fell asleep again. Once home, his Daddy carried him inside and set him in the crib where he continued his nap. I also took a nap, a rare guilty pleasure, and I only allowed it because I stayed up way too late last night. I was sleepy at 10 pm last night, which is almost never the case as I am practically nocturnal most of the time. But I decided to watch a movie I rented and stayed up way too late laughing way after it was over. Since we got up early to travel, I was ready for a nap when we got home.

We had supper with Gran and Pop tonight at their house, and we ate in front of the television (yes, Dennis too) with the intention of watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics. And we did actually watch the ceremony some, but we found ourselves caught up in the season finale of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (which came on after Dennis went to bed in his pack and play at their house). When it was over, we watched the rest of the closing ceremony and some of the more exciting footage from the different events. We didn't watch much of the Olympic coverage while it was on (I don't have cable or satellite at home and the picture is fuzzy at best on the local channels), but we did happen to catch some of the women's gymnastics while we were staying at the lake house. Being not the least bit athletically inclined myself, watching those girls contort that way amazes me. I wonder if Dennis will participate in any sports. He won't have inherited any natural ability from either of us, so that might hinder him a bit. We are avid hikers, and I am actually a decent swimmer. We both Scuba dive, though it has been a while since I have been under, what with having a child and all. David played football in school, but I don't think he was first string or anything. Technically speaking, I played basketball in high school but saw very little game time and after a bad bout of mono was relegated to team manager instead. No big sports legacy from us. But we know enough to teach him to throw and catch and run, I suppose. I'm hoping we don't have a big Little League future ahead of us, but if that's what makes him happy, that's what we'll do. Right now his favorite sports are running, climbing, and crawling through tunnels. He ran down the driveway a good ways today when we were leaving to go to his grandparents' house, and when we called for him to stop, he turned around and waved and said "bye bye" and then ran further away. David had to go after him and bring him back. And while at Gran's & Pop's, he climbed up onto the top of the old school desk and would have gone higher if there was anything to climb higher onto. He's just learned to crawl through tunnels and delighted in crawling through the Great Plastic Play Structures that inhabit the playroom over there, thanks to a previous tenant of a rental house that left several hundred dollars worth of baby paraphernalia behind. It gives him a safe indoor place to be active, so we're pretty happy about it. He'll grow up playing in there, and I'm sure the toys and games and furnishings will grow more sophisticated as he does. It will be amazing to see.