Precocious Child

Inspirational song: Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) (John Lennon)

I could not have anticipated Dmitri hitting peak little brother this early in his life. But when we got home from Costco, and he started bonking duplo blocks into stuff, he naturally poked at his sister with them. She said ow. And in a perfect imitation of her tone and pitch, he mocked back, "ow." As a little sister myself (and grandpa is the youngest of five), I can only be impressed with his precociousness. Well done, lad.

Grandpa took them down to Boulder to watch planes fly in patterns at the airport that he flies from. They have a better (safer) viewing area than the airport here, where the parking area is right off a busy road. They got chicken nuggets and sat and watched air traffic. Dmitri spent quite a bit of his time climbing onto the top of the picnic table, while Valerie called out encouragement to the planes. Not the pilots, the planes. "Good landing, airplane!"

They picked me up on the way back to town, and we went straight to Costco. Valerie was snoring hard in the back seat, having worn herself out from so much entertainment. We made sure we passed by the Christmas decoration section twice, once on the way in, once as we left. We stopped to smell candles, and look at lights. If you look at the photos, you might see more "little brother" in action.

After nuggets and then Costco ice cream, those kids were filthy. We already had a suggestion from their mother that giving them a bath before they were sent home would be helpful to her. I had to take care of a couple of strenuous cleaning tasks before drawing the bath, and once I got Valerie in the tub, I didn't have enough energy to strip Dmitri and plop him in the water. I stumbled out into the living room and asked the Mr to do it. Dmitri saw me come out of the bathroom, and while I was asking, he ran in there behind me. I said, "please help me with him. He's going to jump in the bath by himself." Mr S-P finished whatever social media thing he was looking at, and sauntered into the bathroom. He then had the gall to act surprised at what he found. Yes, the boy was in the tub, fully clothed, shoes and all. Good thing toddlers are too young to carry electronic devices in their pockets. A phone or a watch would have been destroyed.