Smarter than the average goldfish

Tonight we visited Alex's babysitter Tina. He LOVES Tina. She lives up a steep hill, so when we drive up a hill, he always asks "Tina?" hoping we are going to visit. Whenever he is pretending to call someone on the phone, it's Tina:

"Umm....Nina? Yeah. Ummmm.....Yeah. OK. Hmm-hmmm. OK. Yeah. Bye"

This is really how his phone conversations go. It makes me wonder what I sound like on the phone if this is his imitation of me.

Anyway, we visited her tonight and she had a couple of little toys to send home with Alex. She doesn't do her home daycare anymore and is cleaning house. So every time we go over there, she sends a few more things home with us.

Tonight's additions to our already toyful home were a little telephone (which made me laugh--it has a cord and is attached to a big base--Alex has two little play "cell phones" I don't know if he'll know what to do with this big clunker!) and a little dog. The dog goes with a bus that she sent home earlier--you know, the kind of toys were all the little characters have the same shaped holes on the bottoms so that they can all sit happily on the bus seats without falling out when they go over the couch, off the table, etc.

Tina says to me "This goes with that bus I gave you guys last time. I found it after you left."
I say something casually back like "Oh, that bus, OK."

Alex fell asleep on the way home from Tina's. He woke up an hour later and came out to play. He started to play with that little bus and then he walked to Dan and said "Doggy?" with his arms up in the pose that means "Where is it?"

He remembered that he was supposed to have a new dog to go with the bus. I was impressed but at the same time frightened. When your kid starts to have an understanding, not to mention a memory that is actually better than that of a goldfish, you are in trouble. It has been to our great advantage that we can sneakily hide things and then "disappear" them (hmm...that kinda makes me feel like the Godfather or something), with no real consequences. Alex has certainly remembered things and asked for them later, but these were usually more like "fixtures" in his world--playdough, paper, crackers, etc. Not something that he overheard once and didn't even get to play with or hold at them time. We are going to have to be more careful about what we say!

It's A Great Day To Be A Baby!

This is the phrase Dan uses when Alex is having some kind of wonderful time. And today was just that!

We went to visit friends Karla and Marc who live up on K-Bay (Kaneohe Bay). Their house actually has a deck that sticks out into the Bay. The Blue Angels were doing an air show at the Marine Corps base right across the bay, so their deck was the perfect place to sit and watch the show.

We knew the airplanes were going to be a hit. We'd told Alex that we were going to see planes, and he happily stuck out his arms and ran around the house making "Vrooooommmmm!" noises. But little did we know that Karla and Marc actually had several surprises there for us! Not only did they have planes flying overhead doing tricks, but they also had kayaks in their boat house, a sail boat and a "dingy" as Karla described it attached to their dock, plus they had a super-friendly shaggy dog named Salty. PLUS, there were other boats either rowing or sailing by all the time. Oh my, oh my!! Alex couldn't contain his excitement. Every second it seemed that something else had him just jumping for joy.

"Mommy! BOAT!"

"Wow, Alex, another boat?"

"Mommy! PLANE!"

"Oh, the planes are still up there?"

"Mommy! DOGGY! BALL!"

"The doggy is chasing the ball?"

And this went on for hours! It is really fun to your kid so happy about the world, and that he is so happy he wants to share it all with you, too.

Sometimes I sigh and say absent-mindedly, "Oh, you see another truck?" as we drive along and I hear "MOMMY! TRUCK!" from the back seat yet again, but sometimes he really does make me slow down and appreciate something that I haven't noticed or appreciated in a long time...like....

"Mommy, look! Bug." And we stop to stare at a little lady bug on a leaf. If I'm not in too much of a hurry (OK, when does that happen?!?!) we'll sit and stare and enjoy the magic of that little bug.

Or, even better, "Mommy, look! Poop!" And we both stop to stare a pile of dog poop that someone has failed to clean up.

Thanks for helping me see the important stuff that I usually overlook, kiddo.