Sir Edmund Percival Hillary

Sir's climbing abilities are advancing. To his credit, he did ask for help getting down.

His favorite spoken word of the week is "Daddy."

His favorite signing word of the week is "cold." Chris and I were talking about cold at the dinner table and Peter jumps up and signs "the ice cream is cold" then runs to the window and signs "outside is cold." I gave him popsicles last weekend because he was cutting molars. Later in the week I was asking him if he wanted a cracker in the car and he said he wanted a popsicle. We don't know the sign for popsicle, so he pointed to the popsicle stick on the floor (alas, there are many things on the floor of my car) and signed cold. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

All of a sudden he started to ask to watch "Blues Clues" a lot! His request coincided with him actually playing Blues Clues. For those of you who don't know the show, the characters find a series of clues and try to figure out the answer to a puzzle. The first time I saw that he was "playing" was when they asked "which of these piles has 3 things?" Peter signs "the bananas" and the actor says "that's right, the bananas." I thought-- this must be a fluke. Maybe he just saw bananas on screen and signed that coincidently-- but the other piles were all things that he knew the signs for and when he signs just to say things that he recognizes, he'll sign the whole picture. Then I thought, well, he's seen this episode 100 time and he memorized the answer-- but then we got a new Blues Clues DVD from the library and the first time he watched it, they asked "which animal goes above and below the water?" and he signs, "the dolphin." I had no idea they could know all this at such a young age!

Yesterday, I wasn't planning to put him in baby-sitting at the Y -- but he saw the other kids playing with the toys and begged to go in. When I left, he ran off to make some pretend phone calls. I had no idea that pretend play started so early! When I came back to get him, he had made a friend. The sitters said this little boy was crying when his mom left him and Peter went to console him. They continued to play together the rest of the time. I ended up leaving him an extra half hour because he wanted to play with his friend. Sniff! He's growing up so fast!!

My Endorsement

I encourage you to ignore this and I hope you will feel free to disagree, but here it is:

I sent money to Barack Obama the other day. I want him to be the next president.

I don't think I know him very well, but I have never heard him say anything idiotic or reprehensible. I don't mean to damn him with faint praise, I think that's extraordinary these days.

He seems to match my priorities well:

I think the best way to deal with America's foreign problems is to stop making them worse. There are no meaningful foreign threats to the physical security of Americans that can't be fixed with honesty and intelligence.

I think that our top national priority should be to restore and promote America's "soft" infrastructure: an educated population, unafraid of penury, full of optimism and enthusiasm. Such an America would have nothing to fear from anyone or anything.

I want to be proud of America again.

no no no!

I've written before about Peter's spoken vocabulary. All of the words I listed before are "baby talk" words. Now he's said his first "real" word. I don't know how to describe the difference that I'm getting at-- but if you heard it, you'd know what I mean. Anyway, the word is: NO! He goes around the house demonstrating all the things he's not allowed to do saying no, no, no. He also says no to food he doesn't want to eat or activities he doesn't want to do. Sometimes he just says it because he knows he says it well and he's pleased with saying it. I'm trying to get him to say yes instead with little success.

He made his first sign language sentence this week. He pointed to the radiator and asked, "Hot?" then he went and touched it and said, "No. Cold."

Last week he clearly needed to go potty and I asked him if he wanted to go. He said no. Then I asked him where his potty was. He pointed to the guest room. I'm thinking that he's confused because there is no potty in the guest room. I tell him it not there. He tells me it is there. This continues a while and I drop it. Later I was in the guest room and I find that he'd hidden a bag of poopy diapers in the guest room. He knew.