lunch date

Dennis accompanied us to Birmingham again today and we had lunch with some good friends. He was a bit wild before and after lunch, climbing up onto the table at Zaxby's and launching himself at Gran and Ellen seated on the other side. He was fine while he was eating, focused on his plate and the task at hand, but before and after he was BUSY visiting and hugging and table dancing.

More shopping followed the meal. Dennis napped through some of this but awoke in time to visit the much-depleted toy section at Ross. They had NOTHING. So we took him to Target (not the bad one we went to yesterday), where we were pleased to discover half an aisle devoted to Thomas the Train stuff. He tried to load the cart with everything he could reach, including one or two things that he already owns. I tried to focus his attention on the nice Take Along engines that were clearance priced, and that is how Emily the Train came to join his fleet. (She came with a coal car and was priced under $5). He has 6 engines in the Take Along series now: Percy, Thomas, Dennis (his first one, of course), Culdee, James, and now Emily. To be completely honest, he has 7 because he has 2 of Thomas (but they look very different in the face). Gordon is his favorite, and we haven't bought him a Gordon yet. We want the Lights and Sounds Gordon (but it wasn't under $5) because he LOVES the ones that have sounds. Maybe he'll get a Gordon soon. It's hard to tell if he was more excited about the new train or the new toothpaste, a toddler toothpaste with Thomas on the tube. He pointed to the engines on the toothpaste box and named them all for me, starting with Gordon. I don't know how he knows Gordon is Gordon, because he's the same color as Thomas and doesn't look much different--he's a little bigger and has an 'older' look to his face. He's older and more responsible on the shows we've seen (and is the fastest engine of the fleet). Dennis was sad to hand the toothpaste box over to the clerk at checkout but she gave it right back to him and happiness was restored.

We had our first toy meltdown today. We were steering him out of the Thomas section, and he cried big tears (even though we were taking an engine with us). I think he was panicked because he hadn't loaded everything into the cart yet and we were leaving some things behind that he thought he wanted. We moved into another aisle and he chose the chemistry set shown in the picture and was very sad when we took that away from his as well. It was a tough shopping trip for him. He was happy again when we got to the car and he got to play with the trains that we brought with us.

Tonight, we played farm for an hour while David was wonderful enough to cook supper for us. We set up two farms and 'visited' each other. His people kept falling off cliffs and wrecking the tractor and he'd pretend to be shocked and yell "NO!" (which is how he says "Oh, no!"). He impressed me with a two word sentence that he used several times: "close door" while he was closing the barn doors. He also drank from a regular cup for the first time tonight, wetting his shirt in gargantuan proportions but laughing about it. We bought him a little plate-cup-bowl melamine set with cars and trucks on it, and he is so very proud of it. He held on to that plate set almost halfway home tonight (before flinging it to the van floor like he'd done with the frog and the trains and the sippy cup...). He unpacked it from the box and brought it to me in the kitchen to add to our dishes when we got home. I can't believe how grown up he seems tonight. He named all his trains for me tonight and all the farm animals as well. That's an active little mind in there and I just love to watch it so engaged. He's fun to play with now, too. He made his cow and pig (and the farmer) 'eat' some corn from the cornstalk that came with the farm set, and the great part of that was watching him put the animal's mouth precisely on the corn cob and then listening as he made the smacking and munching sounds with his own mouth. He's a great little play buddy, and I'm almost disappointed that he had to go to bed. What am I going to do with the rest of the evening?