Meet and Greet and A Monster

This morning, I went with Judi and my dog Crunch, seen here, for a walk at the university.

It was cold and windy, but walk was quite pleasant anyway because there was a beautiful blue sky. Crunch and I had fun wandering around peeing on things. (Crunch was the one doing all of the peeing. I mostly wandered along behind.)

After the walk Dave and I went to the gym. It was a slow afternoon at the gym, only a few patrons wandering about. Dave and I did a quick hour workout because we had to come home and get ready for dinner at my aunt Char's house and for this little meeting:



That's a photo of E.L. Kiddo meeting The Newbie for the very first time. You can see how thrilled he was. I think in this photo, E.L.'s Nana was trying to convince him that The Newbie wasn't going to be a permanent fixture in their house. You can also see part of The Newbie's carseat in the lower right-hand part of that photo. At one point in the evening, E.L. stopped to examine it and then turned to ask me, "Is that the baby's nest?"


There's E.L. Kiddo with the remains of a concha and a chocolate biscochito.

The trauma caused by the intrusion of The Newbie into E.L. Kiddo's life was alleviated by--you guessed it--sweets. Sugar makes everything better. (Except your teeth. Those it makes worse.) See?



He's such a cutie-pie. He now sings--well, yells mostly--his ABCs with a southern accent, and he can also do a rousing rendition of Itsy-Bitsy Spider (though he does get stuck for a long time on "The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout" part and has to be nudged along by his Nana). At one point, when he was being reticent about singing his ABCs, I sung to him to the ABC tune, "A B C D I see the baby. She can't sing her ABCs like you..." and he paused (I think it never occurred to him that you could just put just about any words into a tune dedicated to the ABCs). He said, "Sing it again!" So I sang, "A B C D, I see you! Why won't you sing your ABCs?" Then he went off on a long sing-songy ABC song that he made up. It was pretty cute, though no one could tell what he was singing about.

When his father was a little squirt like him, he used to run up to people and say, "Cat! Bed! Rhyme?" He was trying to figure out the magical rules of why some things rhyme and some things don't. He was always thrilled when he got it right, "Dog! Log! Rhyme?" Yes, Josh, those rhyme. Good job!



And here's another monster, this one embroidered. He's got a little red bow tie and you can see that he's on a leash (that I haven't stitched yet). The leash leads up to the hand of a little Dutch girl in traditional dress, complete with wooden shoes. The thought of a little Dutch girl and her pet monster amused The Brain very much.