Decker

Hi everyone!

Well, it’s been beautiful these past few days, so this morning my mom and I decided to go to the park! Even though it’s more crowded on sunny days, I still like to play on the slides and especially like to hang out at the gazebo. (I tell my mom, ‘go gaZEHbo mama!’). Sometimes when we are done with the park, we walk back through town and watch all the people who are shopping and eating. My favorite part is this big statue of a cat (I call it ‘big brown cat’), with a sign with letters next to it. Mommy is very patient and lets me climb all over the statue and pet it and count the letters on the sign - it’s good times!

So what are these new tricks I speak of in the title? Well, for starters, I surprised my mommy when I was taking a bath today and I started counting and kept going all the way to twenty! She knew I could count to 10, but when she heard 11, 12, 13…she flipped out and called Daddy! What can I say - counting is really fun; the Count on Sesame Street always has a fabulous time when he does it! (And he can make it thunder - I haven’t figured out how to do that yet).

Other tricks include my ever expanding musical repetoire. I can now sing ‘ABC’, ‘Bob the Builder’, ‘Sss Sss Went the Little Green Snake’, ‘Wheels on the Bus’, and hum the theme song to Wallace and Grommit. I showed that last one off at Cappy and Pammy’s house the other night, and all the grownups stopped talking for a second to listen - talk about a captive audience! Man, I got ‘em in the palm of my hand! I rehearse when I go down for my nap in the afternoons - Mommy can hear me through the door, and I sing myself to sleep!

And lastly…I’ve been reading to my parents! Now, my mom says she should clarify that I am not actually ‘reading’ persay; however, my favorite thing to do lately is grab a stack of books, and then read back what I have memorized from the pages back to my mom and dad. They seem particularly enthused about this one, and they let me take up a lot of their time doing it! Mommy says she can’t believe how much I can remember, and it’s nice to have someone else read to her for once! My favorite books to read to my folks are: “Baa Choo”, “Mrs. Wishy Washy” (both are from this neat bookstore in NY that Katil and Tully always go to, just for me! Cool, huh?), “The Good Humor Man”, “How Do You Get There?”, “Curious George Rides”, “Blue Hat/Green Hat”, and “The Going to Bed Book”. Good times! And when Mommy or Daddy don’t have a free moment to sit with me? Then I just read out loud to myself!

Oh! And there is this great movie you HAVE to see - I can’t get enough of it! It’s called “Toy Story 2″, and it has this cool spaceman named Buzz Lightyear who flies, and Sheriff Woody, who has to get his arm fixed, and a silly dinosaur and a pig and mommy and daddy potato heads, and space cats! I give it four blankets! (My higheset rating)

Hope everyone is enjoying all this nice sunshine and getting to ride their bikes and play with their wagons like I am! Happy Friday!

Hi everyone!

Yay! It looks like spring is finally here! Mommy and Daddy and I have been going outside a lot, and it’s been great but I think there is something wrong with our noses because we all keep sneezing! Mommy says it’s like in “Robert the Rose Horse”, where flowers made him sneeze. Well, there must be teeny little flowers in the air, because that’s what’s making us all sneeze the most!

It was a really neat weekend - Daddy’s birthday was on Friday, and when he woke up that morning, I went into the bedroom and sang “Happy Birthday” to him (Decker style, which means at the end, you finish with “mmmm CAKE!”). Daddy let me help him open his presents that afternoon, and then he and Mommy went out to dinner and a boring grownup movie (they told me there were NO cartoon characters in it at all!) so I hung out at Pammy and Cappy’s house, and made lots of pretend phone calls, which made Cappy laugh.

The next day, we had a birthday party for Daddy at our house, and I got to play with Pammy,Cappy, Tully, Katil, Uncle Ryan and Aunt Amanda, and there was CAKE! Yeah CAKE!

And THEN - the next day was EASTER! This is a holiday I am still just learning about, but here is what I can tell you: There is bunny rabbit named “Easter Bunny”. Apparently he is good friends with Santa Claus. Anyway, the Easter Bunny likes to hide eggs and baskets filled with treats, and then you get to look for them! I had been getting in some practice all week, because our neighbor had some plastic eggs in her garden and she let me hide them in the shrub and then find them and put them in a basket. Good times! I practiced a LOT, so when I went to Pammy and Cappy’s house that night, I was ready! I found lots of eggs with cool stuff in them like pretzels and goldfish crackers and CHOCOLATE! Plus I got a neat little toy sea turtle, and a book! I like this holiday! I was disappointed to discover that the next day was just a regular ol’ boring Monday, but my mom and I went to the park and played at the gazebo for a long time, so that wasn’t bad!

I’m saying more and more every day - I like to keep my parents on their toes!

Have a nice and sunny day!

This morning the sun was actually out! So my mom and I hopped in the car and drove over to Walnut Creek so we could walk to Civic Park and play on the playground. It’s a pretty great playground - there’s this big kid slide that I just discovered, and I climb up the steps and then slide down the slide all by myself! (Well, my mom hangs out at the top of the slide to make sure I don’t fall off the playstructure - it’s very high up!). Anyway, I love the playground but when I get tired of it my other favorite part of the park is the gazebo (’zebo’). So we went over there for a while (bringing along my ever trusty stick - I have to find one each time we go there), and I decided it would be fun to mess with Mommy again and surprise her with some new tricks. So I took my stick and moved it up and down on the rails of the gazebo, and said “paint goat!”. This was a reference to one of my favorite videos, about a goat who paints with different colors (his name is Vincent Van Goat). I have a book with paintings that look just like the paintings from the video, and I surprised Daddy the other day by pointing that coincidence out, but that’s another story). Anyway, my mom was like “that’s right, Decker! Now, can we count the rails in the railing? One…”. I thought I better jump in at this point, so I did! I counted each rail individually, all the way up to ten! (Well, I need some help remembering ten). My mom apparently REALLY liked this trick, because she jumped up and down and hugged me and said “Decker! You counted!”. So we did it again (this time I remembered ten). It was super fun! And it seemed to please my mom, so that’s cool! So if any of you need anything counted out there, let me know and I’ll be happy to step up!

Hi everybody! Well, it’s raining today, but on Saturday we caught a break and the sun came out for the WHOLE day! Mommy said it was because it was April Fool’s Day, but that she didn’t mind Mother Nature’s joke. Mommy is weird sometimes! Anyway, really early that morning, my folks packed me up in the car and we drove for a super long time to a place called Monterey. On the way, I saw lots of rolling green hills, farms, and then the ocean! I chanted “oshen” all the way into town! (When I wasn’t astounding my folks with my latest renditions of “Wheels on the Bus” and “Bob the Builder”).

When we got there, we met up with Pammy, Cappy, Tully and Katil and went for a walk over to this fence where you could peek through and see a bunch of seals sleeping on the beach! There were a couple of little seals who kept playing in the water, but the grownup seals were all sleeping. (Typical!). Then we went to this big building called an ‘aquarium’, and once we got inside, I could tell this was gonna be great. Aquariums are like an inside zoo, where you can go and look at fish and penguins and sharks and other cool animals. We started at the penguins, and my favorite part was the play area where you could turn a wheel and make the puppet penguins ‘talk’ to each other! There was also a big picture of penguins with holes where the faces would be, so you could stick your head through and pretend to be a penguin! I pretended to be a baby penguin a long time! Then, we went over to this really cool tunnel that was only big enough for kids like me (no grownups allowed!), and inside there were fish tanks and in one of the tanks was NEMO! Wow! I thought that was extra neat, and it took a good deal of persuading on my mommy’s part to finally get me to leave!

We also saw otters who played with toys in the water while they swam backwards (they were funny!), and big orange bubbles that floated up and down (my daddy called them ‘jellyfish’). Then we went downstairs to this big big big tank, and there were sea turtles swimming in it! Katil told me that sea turtles eat the bubbles - that sounded so crazy, but she must be right because she read it on a sign!

Then we saw some ENORMOUS octopuses (mommy kept saying octopi, but I couldn’t see any pie!), and they kept moving around and waving at me! We saw birds and sharks and I got to pet a starfish! Then, my favorite part was getting to run around outside - it was a beautiful day and the sun was shining and it was just awesome!

When we were done at the aquarium, we drove for a bit to another place that had a beach and some rocks that were next to the ocean, and I got to climb on rocks while the grownups had a soda and took pictures of me. Then, we drove some more to another beach, where we got to right out onto the sand! The grownups were napping (like the seals, how boring!), and after my juice and 2 cookies I got restless so Pammy took me for a walk and we got to see a green garbage can! Then, Daddy, Mommy and Cappy joined us and we went walking on the sand next to the water and then up this hill to a really flat and pretty green lawn and I got to run around on it until some people came riding up in a little car holding sticks. Daddy said they were going to play, so we had to go. Bummer!

That was ok though, because then we walked around the town and looked in all the windows of the stores and a lot of them had funny statues and stuff. Tully picked me up and carried me for a while, which was nice because I was getting tired! Then we went to dinner and I got to drink FULL STRENGTH apple juice and the waiter brought me something that looked like play-doh (but Pammy called it pizza dough) and some crayons, so I had a jolly time putting the crayons in the dough and singing ‘Happy Birthday’. All the grownups ate their pizza, and then we were all tired so my folks packed me up again and we drove home. What a day! I can’t wait to go again!

I’ve found a new way to entertain myself and my folks - I like to sing! This weekend my mommy and daddy discovered that I can sing “Bob the Builder”, “Wheels on the Bus”, “Happy Birthday” and “Oo! Ah! Dance in Smarty Pants!”. It’s really fun and I especially like if I get applause at the end (mom’s really good about that). Next I think I’ll try to master the lyrics to some Bare Naked Ladies songs!