recent dane-isms

Dane has started carrying his little dog Sparky around quite a lot, and he's started talking to him. It is the CUTEST thing to hear him just saying in the other room, "Sparky, I play trains" or "Sparky, Mommy change Dane's diaper" or "Sparky, lay down ground."

He didn't want to go pick up Tommy from work the other day so as I was convincing him I said, "Daddy will be so happy to see you!" He really picked up that line and has started saying it all the time. "Mommy, I happy see you!" "Sparky, happy see you."

Every day while we drive down to Plano to get Tommy from work, Dane (all on his own) begins planning out things he wants to tell Tommy. He'll just be sitting in the backseat and he'll tell me, "Tell Tommy pasta hot. Tell Tommy Dane make pasta. Tell Tommy pink car!" (Those are all the things he wanted to tell Tommy yesterday.) And then as soon as we get to Tommy's office and he comes out, Dane starts yelling all those things he wanted to tell Tommy like he MUST TELL HIM ALL OF THEM AT ONCE.

He is so into birthdays right now. We called his auntie Callie on Saturday and sang happy birthday to her, and all the rest of this week he'll randomly burst into song: "Happy birf-ay Callie!" And then he makes me sing the song for all of the Winnie the Pooh characters--it's apparently always Eeyore's birthday. I was trying to forestall a tantrum at Ikea today (unsuccessfully, I might add--it happened a few minutes later) and I told him that his own birthday is coming up, and he got sooo excited and started singing "Happy birf-ay Dane" and told me he wants birthday cupcakes. He didn't understand that it's still 2.5 weeks away.

We laugh because he goes from hot to cold in about 2 seconds flat (normal for toddlers, I know, but it's so amazing to see it in action). Today he was throwing a full out tantrum, screaming and sobbing with tears running down his cheeks, because I made him sit in his booster seat to eat lunch LIKE HE ALWAYS DOES. He cried for about three solid minutes. Then in about ten seconds he calmed down, started eating, and two minutes later started singing "Popcorn Popping" and wanted me to join in with him.

He has a little board book with the words to a few of the Winnie the Pooh songs in it, including the intro song with all the characters' names, and he's totally learned the song. He can fill in all of the characters when we sing it for him: "A donkey named..." "EEYORE" "is his friend, and..." "KANGA" "and little..." "ROO!" Today he was being super silly (or so he thought) and was singing, "A donkey named SCHOOLBUS" and looking at me with the funniest face. The sense of humor of a one-year-old.

Yesterday I was unloading the groceries from the car, and had to walk across the street with Dane from where our car was parked to the apartment. It was a bit of a hike (for his attention span) and I was worried Dane would start running into the street and I wouldn't be able to grab him with all the bags. I told Dane, "Can you be very obedient and walk with mommy across the street?" And he very sweetly grabbed my hand (my thumb, since the rest of my hand was filled with grocery bags) and walked with me all the way to our apartment saying, "Obey, obey, obey, obey!" I kept thanking him for being obedient and he was so pleased with himself.

We have a few books he's basically memorized--he'll finish every sentence for us. Most of the ones he loves are about diggers. One of them gives noises for each type of construction vehicle to make, and it says that concrete mixers say "Rumble, rumble!" So now whenever Dane sees a concrete mixer, he says, "Konkey mixer! Wumbo wumbo." It is the BEST. Another book says, "Someday, I'm going to buy a huge digger." and on other pages it says, "I will scoop up rocks. I will push mud." And Dane will just walk around saying those, especially when we see diggers on the side of the road: "Day, buy HUGE digger. Scoop up rocks. Push mud."


Despite the increasing number of meltdowns and tantrums, and the exponentially increased number of HITTING incidents (always Dane hitting me, never anyone else), I really love this age. He is a keeper.