Decker

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!

Loyal readers will know that haircuts have never been a fave rave of mine. In fact, they generally send me into a tailspin of angst and woe - I just don’t like them! Today, my mom was trying to get me dressed and ready to go get in the car, and I said to her (as I sometimes do, in order to figure out where we’re going), “No get haircut today!”. Now, normally her response to this is, “Nope, buddy - no haircut today!”. But today she told me that in fact I did indeed need to go get a haircut from the nice lady, and that we could go feed the fish afterwards. I was pretty freaked out, and immediately started listing all the other places we could go instead: “Go Katil’s house? Go Tully’s place? Go see Cappy Pammy’s house? Go see Uncle Ryan Aunt Amanda’s house, cats? Go Daddy’s office?”. Unfortunately for me, Mommy reminded me that everyone was at work today, so we had to go get my haircut after all.

The whole drive to the haircut place, I kept saying to my mom, “No blow dry hair today!”, and she kept reassuring me that we could ask the nice lady “Please no blow dry hair today”. I hoped she was right - I told her that “blow dryer too noisy scary”, and I just was not feeling good about this situation. Well, when we got there my mom was good to her word and asked the nice lady not to use the blow dryer at the end to clean me up (thanks Mommy!), and the lady WAS really nice. Now, here is where I will brag to you all a bit: Until today, every time I’ve gotten my hair cut, I have sat on my mom’s or dad’s lap, and have cried (even if I was being a good boy and holding still). TODAY I sat in a big boy chair all by myself! (Although my mom was cool and held my hand for me). And I held still like a good boy and I DIDN’T CRY AT ALL! It tickled around my ears when the nice lady cut my hair, but other than that I was ok and there was no blow dryer! And now I have a cool new ‘do for the summer (essentially the same, but less shaggy), and after we were done we did indeed get to go to the building by Daddy’s office and feed the fish! (They eat cheerios - they’re really funny!).

Mommy said she was proud of me today - and you know what? So am I!

A couple of nights ago, Mommy and Daddy were sitting on the couch, and I was playing with my cars and stuff, and suddenly I looked up at the bookshelf and pointed and said “Santa Claus!”. Mommy and Daddy were pretty confused, as there was no Santa Claus that they could see anywhere on the shelf (by June, even THEY get their Xmas decorations down!). So I said again, “Santa Claus!”, and then, because the poor old dears didn’t seem to be getting it, I added for clarification, “Santa Claus says Ho Ho!”. They kept staring at me and saying, “Buddy, where do you see Santa Claus?”. Suddenly - Mommy got it, and jumped up and grabbed a book off the shelf and showed it to me and said, “Decker, can you show me Santa Claus?”. Turns out the book cover I’d been looking at is for a book about Harry Potter (who I was able to identify for Mommy no problem, a fact which tickled her quite a bit!), and the Santa Claus guy is actually named Dumbledore. (Well, they both have white beards, c’mon!). So then Mommy proceeded to pull down all the other five books that were next to that one, and I was able to show her Harry Potter on each one, easy as pie! (Hey, I’m my mother’s son - of COURSE I know Harry Potter!). Mommy and Daddy were quite keen on this new trick (I do love to keep them on their toes!), and Mommy kept saying how proud she was! I showed off my trick the next night for Pammy, and she was just as excited! Hey, I aim to please!

Now one question - who brings the toys at Xmas? Santa Claus or Dumbledore? It’s kinda confusing!

Hi everyone! It’s been a while since I wrote, but I have been a busy boy! I’ve been up to all sorts of summertime fun, including a trip to Crissy Field, a visit to the Big Fish Place in San Francisco (I saw Nemo!), cherry picking (YUM!), and a vacation to a really neat place called “Yosemite”. (It’s hard to say, but fun to go to!)

What’s so great about Yosemite? you may ask - well, it’s got more sticks and pinecones to play with than you’ve ever seen in your whole life! And really cool rocks and trees to climb on! It’s a preschooler’s paradise!

We got in the car last Friday afternoon, and drove a really really really long time (especially because my silly mommy had to keep stopping for potty breaks - she must drink too much juice!), but then we got to this little town called Mariposa. I guess it means butterfly, but I didn’t see any. But the place where we stayed had this really nifty swing, and after my folks and I had had our little picnic dinner in our room, my mom and dad let me play outside on the swing with them until the sun went down! They would sit on the swing and I would push them and sing. Then I would run around and around them in circles. Then I asked them to come sit on the chairs with me (it looked my own talk show!). Then I kept saying “so happy! so happy!”. Mommy kept looking at Daddy and saying “Isn’t life great?” - I guess she thought the swing was cool too. That night I tried to be a big kid and sleep in bed by myself, but I think Mommy got lonely so she came to my bed and kept me company. I slept a lot better after that!

Pammy, Cappy, Katil and Tully had all arrived that night as well, so after we all woke up the next morning, we went to breakfast (and Katil and Tully took me to see a fire hydrant after I kept begging my folks - it was so cool!), and then we drove a long ways again and got to this super amazing place with enormous trees! Cappy said they’re called ’sequoias’, but all I know is that I got to hold both a stick AND a pinecone and rode in my stroller while Daddy pushed me up super big hills (go Daddy!). We took lots of pictures, I got my pants changed, and we drove a long time until we got out and saw these really big rocks! We climbed up this hill with lots of other people, and Daddy tried to hold me up so I could see over the rail and look at this BIG valley and really huge mountains on other side, but then my mom curbed my style and got all nervous about me falling or something, so he put me down and I went and played with Katil on another rock. Then I had my pants changed again. Oh, and my aunts kept making Mommy pose sideways in front of this one mountain called “Half Dome”, and said she looked just like it - my aunts are silly! The grownups all got ice cream after that, but I’m not a huge fan - it’s too cold!

Then we drove down to the valley and looked at this great big building called the “Ahwahnee”, and it was neat but the gift shop was boring. Too many fragile things, and not enough sticks! Then I had my pants changed again. (Hey, it was hot and I was thirsty!).

We went and had dinner somewhere else in the park (the grownups had pizza - how boring! I had goldfish crackers and apple!), and THEN we went and saw this really huge thing called a waterfall! It looks like when you turn on the bathtub, only the top of the faucet is way up at the top of the mountain, and the bathtub is a lot of noisy fast water called a river. It was cold and windy, but I had fun climbing on all the rocks along the path there - Pammy was patient and waited behind with me a lot (hey, I got short legs!). Then all these little teeny bug called mosquitos came out and kept trying to land on us and make us itchy, so my mommy hurried me back to the car while Cappy and Daddy went to the meadow to take more pictures of the big rocks. But poor Daddy - I guess the bug REALLY liked him, so he came back early and ended up with lots of boo boos on his legs that I make sure to bring attention to every single day. Then we drove to our new motel and I got a bath (Daddy bought me a cool rubber ducky with a ranger hat on it!) and a story and went to bed. (Oh, and had my pants changed).

The next morning we went and saw another waterfall! It was nice, but what was much more exciting was this tree down along the path - Cappy helped me climb it like a gazillion times! I was king of the trees! He also kept telling me there was a big mountain there named after him - something like “L Cappy Mountain” (it sounded like he was saying “El Capitan”, but that can’t be right because I’ve never heard of those words). Then after the grownups took a ton of photos, we went and had breakfast and I got to climb more rocks! And have my pants changed! After breakfast, we went to this hiking trail that led up to an even bigger waterfall than the one last night (Mommy called it “Vernal Falls”). Daddy and Cappy carried me on their shoulders up up up up a big long hill, until we all got to this bridge with lots and lots of water rushing under it! Then Cappy took my day bag, and he took me back down the hill for lunch while Mommy, Pammy, Daddy, Katil and Tully all finished walking up the long long hill to look at the waterfall up close. They must have looked TOO close, because I guess they all got soaking wet! But they dried off after having lunch up on the top of the mountain, and then walking back down. Meanwhile, in the valley - Cappy let me line up sticks on a log, took me to see animals in glass boxes in this room called a “Nature Center”, and then changed my pants. Oh, and he let me climb lots of little rocks, too.

When all the other grownups FINALLY came down the hill, we went to one or two more boring grownup places (Daddy let me run around outside with him while they all looked at pictures and stuff). Oh - we did go to this really cool place that had a big mama bear in a glass box, and Katil and Tully let me entertain them with a running commentary about it. Then they changed my pants. When it was finally time to go home, everyone was tired but happy (including me!). I hear they stopped to look at two more waterfalls and get some gas on the way out of town, but I slept through it! I slept all the way home almost, and when I woke up I was a good boy and chittered chattered at my folks and was very pleasant. When we got home it was super late but I got to stay up and have dinner with them! Then I went to bed - what a weekend! I can’t wait to go to Yosemite again!

Hi everyone! Decker J, rappin’ at you once again! Readers of my previous posts may remember that lately I have become very fond of a movie called “Toy Story 2″ - it’s fantastic! It’s got everything you could want - silly dinosaurs, Buzz Lightyear (who flies), Sheriff Woody (who has to have his arm fixed), space cats (Mommy calls them ‘aliens’), and a singing penguin! He is hilarious, and at the end of the movie he grabs a microphone and sings “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” in this really cool voice, with Barbie doll backup dancers and everything! Well, something about that musical number really stuck with me, and so this afternoon after my bath I decided to serenade my mom with a little penguin crooning, Decker-style! I had just stepped out of the tub and gotten dried off, and then I clambered up to the basket on the counter and grabbed the blue rubber thingy that Daddy is always trying to use on my nose (which I HATE), flipped it upside down, and announced to my mom that it was a microphone, “like penguin”. Then I watched myself in the mirror as I sang passionately right into my microphone, “You Got Friend Me/You Got Friend Meeeeeeeeeee”. I looked good! I’m thinking about going on tour - watch for me in Vegas, Atalantic City, and the Rainbow Room this summer! I think I’ll get a fan base quickly, because I got a lot of applause from my mom!

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!