first explanation

After hearing an ominous crash on the other side of the wall from where I was folding laundry (i.e. from Dennis' room), I rushed in to see what had happened. Dennis met me at the door and said "train uh-oh". He seemed fine, and I glanced toward the bookcase (yes, anchored to the wall for safety) and saw his block stacker train on the floor with the blocks scattered around. It had been 3 shelves up, just barely within tiptoe reach (it was completely out of reach last month!). He must have decided he wanted to play with it and gravity helped him a little more than he intended when getting it down. But I'll hand it to him, "train uh-oh" was a completely adequate explanation, and he offered it before I ever asked him what happened.

We reassembled the train and it took me a while to figure out how all the blocks fit on it. I did notice that he'd already begun putting blocks back on it because he'd gotten the engine part of the train a little wrong, but I was just impressed that he was putting the blocks back on the wooden rods by himself. Then we demolished the train and reassembled it yet again! He was such fun today, driving his little cars around the room, talking to his farm animals in their own languages ("moo" and "baa" and "neigh"), reading Where Is Baby's Pumpkin to me. Today he learned that a ghost says "boo". He thought that was great fun.

The picture shows him helping me clean his room (the train, incidentally, is just to the left of his reaching hand). He is learning to put his toys on the shelves and his cars in their basket. Just after we finished cleaning everything, he dumped out the car basket and the farm animal basket, I think just to enjoy the chaos on his floor. I left it as is, and when I returned from the gym, I found that he and his Daddy had cleaned it up again. David said they spent the time during my workout playing, eating, and dancing, in that order.

We know he's crazy about Elmo, but he is still showing such interest in Ernie as well. He found a toy catalog that came with his Elmo laptop and there's a tiny tiny picture of Tickle Me Ernie in it. He brought me that little paper saying "Ernie! Ernie!" and I had to look really hard to see him. But Dennis was right, it was Ernie. I may have to ask Santa to bring him an Ernie of some sort.

The thing that amazed me most today happened while we were watching a Sesame Street video together because he was really tired and it was too early to go to sleep. He kept insisting "night night" and trying to climb into his crib (not a problem I thought we'd ever be having). He shoved Froggy through the crib bars as well, trying frantically to get himself ready for and into bed. I joined him after I finished cleaning the supper dishes and saw them talking about the letter "C". Dennis pointed to the letter on the screen and said "Cookie". No one on the video had said cookie, but sometimes we sing "C Is For Cookie" at home (a Cookie Monster song, one of my favorites). So he may have grasped that "C" is a very important letter for him! Amazing! I can't wait to hear what he'll say tomorrow.