We Deserve It

We’ve had great weather on the weekends lately – sunny and in the sixties, which is my idea of perfect, and after the winter we had, I do think we deserve this nice goldilocks climate.  It is also so much easier to tire out a toddler when said toddler can spend hours outside (although really, he tends to run more in the supermarket or Target; outside he likes to focus on sticks or pebbles and just sort of moseys about).

But it is nice these days, which are still pre-mosquito, to have the back yard as an option in which Owen can mosey and I can follow behind as he does so.  Often while we are being aimless, Sean is busy doing yard and garden work.  He was moving some of the many flowers in our front yard to our back, and Owen came up to him and started a frenzy of greeting:  he kept saying, Hi Dada! Hi Dada! over and over, and even when Sean repeatedly said hi back, the repetition continued.  Finally we realized his “Hi Dada” really meant, “What are you doing?”  And so when we told him what Sean was doing, he said “Yes” as if he had known all along, and then a few seconds later wanted us to tell him all over again.  Asking and hearing the same answer seems to be how Owen processes information these days.

Owen and I played a lot of peekaboo:

In addition to hiding behind a skinny tree, he also stood in the middle of the yard and covered his eyes with his hands, and then cackled wildly when I would ask where Owen was.  That never gets old, apparently.

Dorothy often gets barked at by two little dogs who live next door, and she generally ignores them and does not bark back, although now Owen will imitate the sound of the two little dogs guarding their perimeter.  Dorothy did bark at me to try to get me to play with her and the large stick she had found, and eventually Owen started imitating this too.  So now when we all go outside, the two neighbor dogs start to shriek, Dorothy will bark at her stick, and Owen will start answering Dorothy with a Woo(f) Woo(f).

It’s not a quiet place, our yard.