one smart cookie

One of the nice things about Donovan waking so early every day is that we end up getting up at the same time as Zach, so we get a teensy bit of family time, even if it's just 5 or 10 minutes as he's getting ready for work. This morning once we were all up, we quickly opened up all the windows and doors to let in the still-cool air before the predicted heat of today set in. When D saw the front door open he of course was instantly itching to head outside. I normally have us play indoors that early in the morning, but noticing how nice it felt outdoors, and remembering Zach's suggestion to water the plants in the morning instead of the evening, I put shoes on the both of us and we headed out for a bit (pjs and all). D "helped" water the plants (and btw I swear they grew more today than any other single day, so I think we'll stick wit hthe morning watering routine) and D loved playing in our patio. It felt nice to get "outside time" in when it still felt nic eto be out there. Then the garbage truck came in, and D REALLY wanted to go see it so we walked out to the street (still in pjs and all) and D followed the truck as it drove all the way down the end of the block, picking up the trash and recycling.

After all this, D took a 1.5 hour morning nap. A nap that's usually 45 minutes long. Um, yeah, we're so doing this mornings-outside thing again.

A few weeks ago I found this new playground made up of hispanic moms wanting to help each other, and their kids, speak Spanish. EXACTLY what I've been looking for. I met them at the park a couple weeks ago, and today D and I headed over to an at-home playdate with the group. It was great-- the house had this awesome backyard, with lots of water play out in the grass (small kiddie pool, water table, etc) and also a great covered patio for playing in the shade. The kids ranged in age from 4 months to about 3 years. I expected D to play in the water more, but he instead hung out in the shade most of the time, fascinated by the new toys and new people, and scarfing down chips and guac, and fresh blueberries. We stayed for about 2 hours and had a small lunch, then came home in time for D's afternoon nap.

He slept for TWO HOURS!!!! Which brings today's grand total of daytime sleep to 3.5 hours. I don't think he's slept that much during the day since he was 3 or 4 months old. It was glorious. I even got to take a nap myself, even waking up on my own before him. Glorious.

We made an afternoon trip to Trader Joe's for some groceries, where thankfully it wasn't very crowded and D was extremely cute and made lots of new friends. At dinner he astounded me yet again by singing"water" (a sign I've showed him sporadically before, focused on it more just today). I am amazed at how quickly he learns new things, which unfortunately makes it that much more iritating when he seems to refuse to learn others (like not tossing his cup on the floor). He still occasionally signs "eat", but has definitely started to use the "more" sign to mean food/hungry/eat and did so often today. He also has started saying "boom!" lately whenever anything falls or when he knocks things onto the floor, and the other day he repeated "down" to me several times when I was showing him (speaking) "up" and "down" using a chair cushion (which he found HILARIOUS).

He is such a smart cookie. Which I'm proud of, but also worries me tremendously as I know he'll be (already is!) turning that around on us quite frequently.