Ivan the Entertaining

We're at a funny stage right now with Dylan (usually funny-weird, sometimes funny ha-ha). She's walking, true, but changes in terrain, footwear, or climate drastically effect her mobility. On laminate flooring with bare feet, she's a whirling dervish. Sometimes she even breaks into a run. But throw some sandals on her or put out a throw rug and she becomes, literally, physical comedy.

Dylan is also expanding her vocabulary. That's not entirely true; she hasn't picked up any new words lately, but she makes some nice stabs at repeating what we say. It always comes out as gibberish, and she sounds remarkably like the Swedish Chef, which is really funny. She's also learned that loud grunts and squeals are a great way to give direction. If we turn the pages to Go, Dog, Go too slowly (e.g. in time to read every page), she'll let us know by grunting. If we skip pages or breeze through the book too quickly, she'll scream.

Aside from trying to mimic what we say, she also tries to copy what we do. I put up a swing for her and she immediately learned to climb to the first step on our foot stool. She loves grabbing the wheel if we're taking a short trip in the truck (no farther than Medford), and running the blinkers ... and the wiper fluid, and the wipers, and the radio .... She's also getting good at using a fork. By "good," I mean she holds a fork with one hand and feeds herself with the other.

This walking, babbling, curious stage reminds Regina and me of one thing: drunk people. Or, more precisely, living with Dylan is like having and old, Russian, drunk for a roommate. Cute and cuddly one minute (like all drunk Russians), belligerent and ornery the next. Dylan stumbles around, demands things by pointing and screaming (food, toys, books), and makes us guess what she wants, falls into joyful dance when we get it right, then farts and passes out in blissful slumber.

I guess the fun part is that her behavior reminds us of our college days, except when Dylan falls asleep, we don't write "smelly" across her forehead. Yet.