Spreading your wings
We had a fun weekend. Grand Haven on Friday for a couple of hours, which elicited a huge "I love the beach!" from you. Then the GR Flickr Group's picnic on Saturday morning. You met a few kiddos and had some fun chowing down on hotdogs and hitting the playground.
They had one of those cool "merry-go-round" type things there. You've seen them at other playgrounds before, but you've never much liked them. You're usual method of play on those contraptions is to climb on them, ask me to spin it, then hurriedly scream at me to stop spinning it so you can get off. This one seemed to get the same reaction from you. When one of the other kids started to spin it, your eyes got huge and you reached pleadingly toward me to grab you off of it.
Later on, though, after you'd bonded pretty nicely with Tyler, I looked up to see you sitting in the middle of it, three other kids running crazily around to spin it, and you yelling, "Go superfast!" Wow. It was so cool seeing you conquer one of your fears like that. You're much more likely to make progress in those types of situations when you watch your fellow kidlets doing so too. You've even become one of the four boys in your class (you counted) who can climb on top of the monkey bars at daycare. Michael taught you and you've been monkeying around up there ever since.
Another first from this weekend is that you now insist that you be the one to strap you into your car seat. You don't want help from me with that anymore. Cool, in many respects, but another reminder that you're not only getting taller, but more independent. You've also lately figured out the clasp on your bike helmet and you're pretty competent in getting that on your head without assistance as well.
Speaking of the bike, we've taken a couple of bike rides in the last week or so where we ride together. Instead of me walking insanely fast behind you to keep up, I ride along and guide you at the street corners. On our trip last weekend, you were so excited about riding together that you insisted you wanted to go on a long bike ride. Until we got about halfway through and you started complaining about the hills and insisting that you could NOT ride home. That was fun, I'll tell ya. I spent half an hour urging you back home as you yelled at me or stubbornly stopped your bike and insisted you weren't going to move an inch.
You can be a bit crazy-making with the attitude sometimes, but you're usually pretty darn pleasant to be around. What gets me is the mood swings. One minute you're laughing hysterically about something I've said or done, the next you're telling me that you hate me. You test us a lot on things. Like today when I came into the bathroom to help you finish wiping and you told me, with a sneaky grin on your face, that you "accidentally" made a hole in the toilet paper. Ha! You dug into the roll at least halfway. And the grinning thing just makes me insane, dude. You seem to find all sorts of naughty things to be funny.
The naughty includes throwing around the potty words. You're favorite is to call someone a poopy head. You've also gotten pretty curious about anatomy. You pointed to my chest the other day and asked me, "What are those?" We've had the conversation before, but I went over it again with you. Later than day, I took two empty toilet paper rolls and aimed them at you like binoculars. You asked to see them, then put them on your chest. I asked you what you were doing, as if I didn't know, and you replied, "These are my boobies." Then you followed up with the ultimate insult, "They're bigger than yours!"
It's never a dull moment, I can assure you. The cutest moment of the weekend, I'd say, was when we went to the Asian market yesterday. We were in search of rice candies and some other fun snacks. When the woman behind the counter was ringing us up, you said to her, "Guess what? I'm from Korea!" She laughed and said, "You're from Korea? I'm from Korea too! I'm so happy to meet you!" Then you proudly took your stash of goodies to the car.
