Weasel Of Doom

D. is starting to occasionally say three- or four-word sentences. This week, the sentence du jeur is “rain rain go away” – when he feels ambitious, D. even tries to add “come back another day” to the sentence, with mixed results. He says “wain wain go way” with such joy on his little face, though, and such enthusiasm, that it is impossible not to smile back. Oh, and it seems to be working, too – we haven’t had any rain this week.

We were running late going to the funeral service on Tuesday, and D. benefited – he got his favorite McDonald’s meal, chicken nuggets and french fries (and over in Russia, my mother’s spidey sense just went off – “Grandson Eating Junk Food Alert! Heart’s Bleeding! Commence Plotting Healthy Meals!”). After D. finished eating the nuggets and the fries, we told him they were all gone. Silence from the back seat. Then “Fwench fwies, all gone…. Chicken nuggets, all gone… Bye bye, nuggets…. Bye bye, fwench fwies….” A pause for the enormity of it to sink in. And again, in a philosophical tone of voice for “all gone”s and a sad one for the “bye bye”s, “Fwench fwies, all gone…. Chicken nuggets, all gone… Bye bye, nuggets…. Bye bye, fwench fwies….” He must have said that at least ten times. B. and I were cracking up.

And talking about bye-byes, when he is in the mood D. would bid farewell to all inanimate objects that cross his path (bye-bye school bus… bye-bye stick… bye-bye juice) but asking him to say bye-bye to people has a 50% chance of getting a loud NOOOooooo and a scream reminiscent of un-oiled door hinges.

Random D. hits:

• He knows you are supposed to say “bless you” when somebody sneezes. So, when he sneezes, he says “bless you” to himself;
• It has become almost impossible to take pictures of him because he would either (a) would not stand still and run away somewhere or (b) would not stand still and run towards me to see what picture appears on the back of the camera;
• He loves to read books, and can spend quite a bit of time turning pages and shouting out what he sees in the pictures;
• His repertoire of words now includes bicycle, motorcycle, lawnmower, truck, school bus, and airplane. He is trying to say a lot more words in English, while ignoring every Russian version of them;
• He is yet to meet a stick he can resist;
• If there is dirt somewhere, no matter how difficult it is to locate, D. will find it and proceed to make it his. As a bonus, he would dump buckets of sand onto his own head
• B. has told him to apologize to S. so many times that now when he is asked to say “I am sorry” D. goes straight ahead to “I am sorry S.,” regardless or not Squeek was actually involved in whatever incident triggered the apology request
• He loves to be tickled, and sometimes would lift up his shirt to expose the belly, and say “Tickle tickle!” He would also pull my head in so I can blow a raspberry on his stomach, while at the same time trying to push me away. Needless to say, he usually ends up sans raspberry.
• He loves to be chased; everything is a game. He runs around, on the floor, the table, the windowsill, laughing his head off as we chase after.
• If he can’t sleep at night, he will drag his blanket to the rocking chair, climb in, rock really hard for a while, then curl up and fall asleep.