Milestone Minutiae

Just in the past week or so, I've noticed that Emmett has mastered his tricycle. He can go forwards, backwards, turn, and even reasonably navigate over bumps that stop his progress. He backs up a little, and uses momentum to carry himself over the bump.

Emmett had a couple of bad dreams last night. He has them occasionally, and sometimes falls back asleep before he even really wakes up once I get there to rub his back. Last night was different because he remembered the dreams, and was coherent enough to tell me about them. Both featured some circumstance where he didn't know where I was.* In the first, we were at a construction site and he couldn't find me. I took the chance to introduce the "replay the dream but make it happy" method of chasing nightmares away. We talked about being at a construction site together, and having one of the workers show us the cool equipment. So far so good, but an hour later, he was upset again. This time, he'd gotten to the bottom of some stairs and didn't know where I was. I told him I was probably right behind him, and asked where we were going together. Quickly, though, I realized that we needed to switch his brain off of these "mom's gone" scenarios a

David told me a joke while we were driving to dinner. Emmett didn't get it, and any attempt to explain it, well, just didn't work. He didn't even seem to get the concept of "joke." We moved on to knock-knock jokes. I told the "interrupting cow" joke, and David tried the "orange you glad I didn't say banana" one, but Emmett still seemed unclear on the concept. He would say "who's there," but missed the importance of the "_____ who?" line. I guess we'll have to keep working on jokes.

Oh, the joys of toddlers. We really do try to answer most of his questions, but once we get a few "whys" into something, we usually will turn the question back on him, asking either why not, or asking him to come up with an answer (because we've just given him one!). Emmett pointed to some sawdust and asked what it was. After telling him it was sawdust, he asked "Why is it called that?" David told him that it comes from when you cut wood with a saw, so what else would you call it? Emmett said "Wood dust, I suppose."

We've been having a great and busy summer. Here are a few things I've been meaning to get posted for a while. When David comes home from work, Emmett usually runs to the door to give him a hug. Sometimes, though, he yells "You're home! I'm so excited!" While in Southern California, David and I went out to dinner without Emmett. When we got home, Emmett yelled "Mom, Dad, you're home! I'm so excited!" We've been trying to teach Emmett how to have conversations -- not interrupting, waiting for a pause before jumping in, etc. So now, he'll often start yelling "Is there a pause?" when he has something to say. While Oma was visiting, she taught him to say "excuse me." At first he protested that it's something that you say when going past someone. But he caught on quickly, and was soon chanting "Excuse me! excuse me!..." whenever he had something to say.