Decker

During the summer my mom takes me to the playground pretty early in the morning, so I can have fun on the slides and ladders before it gets too hot. Normally, this also means that I have the playground practically to myself. But today there were a bunch of really big kids there (Mommy says she thinks maybe even 6 or 7 years old!) already climbing all over the playstructure. Normally, this type of situation makes me want to leave right away, or at least stay far from the big kids who are really noisy and energetic. But today I guess I was feeling kind of social, because I climbed right up that ladder and started talking to all the kids I saw! A general exchange went like this:

Me: Hi, Big Kid, How you doin? (then extend out my arm and wave my hand hello to them)

Big Kid:

Mommy says I was pretty clear, so I know that they hear me! But she said sometimes Big Kids are so busy having fun they don’t remember to say hi back. But she told me it was a nice thing to be so friendly, and she was very proud of me. I also saw a kid a little bit younger than me, and I tried to say hi to him and get him to go down the slide next to me. But I think he was shy! I tried to show him how to go down the slide, but he didn’t seem too interested. That’s ok - at least I’m trying to make friends with other kids! Mommy says she thinks I will really like school, because there will be other kids my age to play with. Cool! I’ll be sure to wave and say Hi and How you doin’?

Hi everyone! So, I got something new to crow about to you all - I can now blow bubbles! For those who may not know, this particular skill is one that has eluded me up till now. Hey some folks can’t whistle, or dance, or cook - well, blowing outward (and hence, blowing bubbles) has been a tricky one to master for me. But this weekend when my aunts were over, I kept pretending to be the Big Bad Wolf and I would huff and puff them until they fell down. I continued to practice on my mom and dad yesterday, and then when we went outside to my big kid wading pool they tried to show me how to huff and puff with bubbles. Something must have sunk in, because today at my speech appt with Pamela, I blew lots and lots of bubbles all on my own! I have my very own style - I don’t make a fish face but I still get the air out (Mommy says I have good lip formation for blowing the flute). I was really really proud of myself! Can’t wait to keep honing my skills!

Wont’ go into too much detail, but I also have to say I’m getting this potty thing down pretty well too! Sometimes I need reminding, but once I’m in there I do my thing all on my own and then I call to my mom or dad to let them know I’m done! The best part is, I get to take a book with me, so sometimes I stay in there a long time just because I want to keep reading my book! I think big boy underpants are in my near future! (Mommy says not to jinx it!)

Other fun stuff from this weekend: I got to stay up way past my bedtime (sitting on Katil’s lap) when Pammy and Cappy had my family over for outdoor movie night! We watched a cartoon about these silly critters (called “Hoodwinked”), and it was so fun! Plus I got to see the stars and moon! Then the next day I went to my cousin Lee’s birthday party in Golden Gate Park, and there were some people there playing this loud music they called “Electronica” and I totally got into the beat! I danced my little legs off - I like music, what can I say? But boy, that night…I was tired!

Raves for the week: blueberries! wading pools! bubbles! books!

It’s been really hot lately! So yesterday morning my mommy packed up a bag full of big towels and some toys and sunscreen (yuck!) and we went over to Katil’s place to play in the pool there - and it was FUN! I’ve never really done more than the plastic kiddie pool thing up till now (I have a neat purple one with penguins on it!), but this was a really big grownup pool, which is completely different. There are certain rules that come with a grownup pool: you can only go in with a grownup, and if you walk around the edge of it, you have to stay right by Mommy. Still very exciting though!

First we pulled out these big long plastic chairs, and lay our towels out on them (my towel had a dinosaur on it!). Then Mommy put my swim pants on, and totally slathered me in sunscreen! Then Katil got into the pool and swam around a bit, and THEN Mommy got out a ball for me to play catch with with Katil! I would throw or kick it to her in the pool, and then Katil would dive for it and throw it back! While we did that, Mommy sat on the edge of the pool with her feet in the water, on the top step. She asked me if I wanted to try it too, and after a while I got brave enough and sat there with her and dunked my feet! I felt very grownup - and the water was nice and cool! The neat thing about swimming pools is that you can kick and splash water at your mom there, which you sure don’t get to do in the bathtub!

Pretty soon Tully showed up too, and then I had TWO people to play pool games with! Finally, Katil asked me if I wanted to try getting in the water, and she would carry me. I decided to try it - and I loved it! So Katil and Tully took turns swishing me around and carrying me in the water, and I never wanted to get out! But we finally did - we went and sat on our towels on those big plastic chairs, and I ate some raisins and made animal sounds for Tully while we dried off and enjoyed the sun. Then I grabbed Mommy’s cell phone and pretended to call people - that made Katil laugh (can’t figure out why - I’m just doin’ what I see my folks do!). I wanted to go back in the water after that, but Mommy said it was time to go home and have my lunch. She bribed me with peach - darn but that woman knows my weaknesses!

Can’t wait to go back to the pool again very soon! And Mommy and Daddy say next year I get to take swim lessons! And Mommy says she might take some too! (I have to admit, she looked pretty funny trying to swim - my aunts said something about “a cat in the water”?).

Hi everybody! Hope you all had a fun 4th of July weekend! Mine was really busy, but it sure was fun! And boy did it wear me out!

On Saturday morning I went to the Farmer’s Market in SF with my mom and dad, plus Cappy, Pammy and Katil. The Farmer’s Market is really cool, because you get to eat lots and lots of fruit! Pammy bought me some blueberries of my very own (YUM!), plus all the nice people at the market tents were giving away free slices of peach and plum! It was like I’d gone fruit heaven! And there’s this really cool statue of a man walking with a stick, and I love statues, so Daddy and I hung out there for a while too. There was a man playing something that looked like a guitar (Katil called it a banjo), and I liked his music a lot! I clapped and danced along, and then Pammy gave me a dollar to put in his bucket - that was fun!

The next day, Daddy and Mommy and I went to Grandpa Rick and Grandma Chris’s house for a party. There were lots and lots of grownups there, plus two other little boys. I spent a lot of time playing on the slide, and then my uncle Ryan let me climb in the front and back of his big green truck! That was cool! I also played in the paddle pool for a bit, and ate lots of grapes for lunch. Later on I was sitting on the swing and fell off and hurt my nose on the ground. It hurt a lot but mostly it just surprised me, and I tried really hard to be brave and let Daddy put an ice pack on my nose and then cuddled on his lap. A sound nap on the way home helped a lot! I have a big boo boo on my nose now - Mommy calls it my battle scar!

The day after that, GQ and great-aunt Leisa drove down in GQ’s blue van and we all met at the park with the blue garbage cans and the climbing rocks. (Mommy calls it Civic Park). They brought two little doggies with them, named Peri and Max. It took me a while to get comfortable with the doggies, but I faced my fears and even tried to play peek-a-boo with them at the end of the afternoon. I got to climb on rocks, show GQ how I can go down the big kid slide, and count all the blue garbage cans! It was fun!

Then the NEXT day, I let my mommy and daddy sleep in until 7:30 am! Wasn’t that nice of me? That afternoon, they took me to see a real big boy grownup movie called “Cars”! It’s about cars! There’s a red car named Lightning McQueen and a blue car named Doc and another blue car named Sally and a brown truck named Mater and a green car named Chick. They all go really really fast and they were funny and I liked the movie a lot! A movie is like tv, but it’s on a super big screen in an humongous living room with lots of other people, plus they turn off all the lights. Pammy sat next to me and let me snuggle on her lap while we watched. Katil and Tully and Cappy were there too - we all had a very good time!

After the movie, we went back to Pammy and Cappy’s house to eat some peach pie (why do grownups ruin fruit by putting it in a pie? They all seemed to really like it though - I guess Cappy made it all by himself!), and then we piled into Cappy’s red truck and drove to Moraga and walked up this big hill at the park there and put out a bunch of blankets and sat down for dinner. (I had plums and banana! Yum!). There was a band playing music, and Katil and Tully took me down the hill so we could go listen to it and dance- that was hecka neat! Pammy joined us too, and we all boogied down! Then they took me over to the playground so I could have fun on the train and the slide some more. After that, we went back up the hill and all the grownups were really boring and wanted to stay under the blankets to keep warm - but I wanted to play! So Tully let me play hide and seek with her and her blanket for a long long time - thanks Tully! Silly Katil got very cold, so she put my extra sweatshirt over her head,with only her nose sticking out! Then it got dark and you could see the moon and some stars, and then - there were these really awesome lights called ‘fireworks’ that kept popping up in the sky! They were orange and red and green and purple - sooooo pretty! Mommy taught me to say “ooh” and “aah” every time they popped up! When it was over I was TIRED! So we bundled up and went back to the car and drove on home. A long weekend, but lots of good memories!

Hi everyone! Decker J here once again, to tell you about my latest obsession - books! I just can’t get enough of them! “Now, wait a second, Decker,” you may be saying right now, “you’ve always liked books - so what’s so new about that?”. Well, over the past few weeks I have discovered that not only are books the best thing in the world when you’re cuddling with your mom or dad, but if they aren’t available - you can read them ALL BY YOURSELF. That’s right - you don’t always need a grownup to keep going with your recreational reading! I know most of my books pretty much by heart at this point, and if I read a new one I can commit it to memory after a few go-throughs as well. So…if I want my mom to read me “The Big Road Race” or “The New Baby”, and she’s not free because she’s busy doing something kinda boring like laundry or something, then I can just sit down and read them out loud to myself! I know some of the stories so well that I don’t even need a book - I’ll just start reciting them in the car while we’re driving along! (It’s much more interesting than that show about KCBS that my mom listens to - I love letters, but that show is just boring! Lots of grownups talking, and no singing about the letters!).

Yup, I love my books. So one of my favorite things to do at night now is to bring a whole pile of them downstairs with me, and then read them on the couch to my folks. They’re really good at multi-tasking, so if they’re doing other stuff like dishes or eating dinner or talking to each other, I know they’re still paying attention at least a little bit. I like to think I provide ambient background noise! Then, when I go to bed, after my dad reads me my bedtime stories, he lets me pick one book to take into bed to read with me - how awesome is that? Did you know you can read in bed? Woo hoo!

I know all my alphabet letters now (I can even name them if they are all out of order!), and it looks like if you arrange them in different ways, they seem to be the stuff on the page that grownups look at when they read a book. I think I may have discovered a new secret code - and I can’t wait to crack it!

So let’s hear it for books! They are way fun and you can take them with you almost anywhere!