another holiday?

Dennis has decided not to have the post-holiday blues this year. He's already started to celebrate Mardi Gras! He knows where the beads are that we've collected in the parades we've been to in Mobile over the years, and he periodically sneaks into our closet and tries them on. He's gotten very good at wearing tons and tons of beads, putting them on and taking them off all by himself.

Today we went to the lake to visit with Uncle Denny and had a wonderful meal with Gran & Pop and Grandma & Bob as well. Dennis ate steadily for over a half hour and was ready for Uncle Denny's dessert specialty of Bananas Foster even after enjoying one of his Grandma's chocolate chip cookies and a tiny bite of her pineapple upside down cake. After several days of light appetite, it was good to see him digging into a meal. He loves peas, and he ate lots of those, but also enjoyed some chicken and quail, dressing, mashed potatoes (only one tiny taste--could he really be my son?), and a bit of barbecue.

Uncle Denny gave him a sock monkey and a very nice easel with chalkboard on one side and dry erase board on the other that also came with paint cups and brushes, magnetic alphabet and numbers, and a roller and clips to put a paper roll in and roll paper up for him to paint. He's already created some dry erase masterpieces and was most excited to discover the big eraser. He was drawing with one hand and erasing with the other. We bought him some non-toxic sidewalk chalk on the way home from the lake, a tub with lots of different colors, and soon he'll be creating chalk masterpieces here to rival the ones he made at Gran's place in Washington.

He played quietly around the house for a while last night, too quietly, and I discovered him playing on the floor with his Advent calendar wreath where I put all the ornaments that come out of the calendar. Nothing suffered any harm except that he unwrapped one of the tiny gift ornaments (hoping, I guess, to open one more present this season). The ornament itself was a gift and was empty inside, and I wonder if he was disappointed. Somehow I don't think he was.

He has certainly loved everything about the Christmas season. It's a good thing he has a birthday coming up in less than three months so that we have another good reason to party with presents!