Dancing, talking, and other random thoughts

Jack has developed some new dance moves.  Tops on the list of things he can now do is spinning around in a circle.  It's not a really new development--he's been doing it a few weeks--but he's getting a lot of practice dancing to some musical greeting cards that we've been given.  He's done it hundreds of times now, but every time he cracks open a card and hears the music start he's still amazed.  His favorite is a birthday card Ben got from my parents that plays "I'm So Excited."  Strange that probably 15 years after it came out I still can't hear that song without thinking about the Saved By The Bell episode where Jessie gets addicted to caffeine pills ("I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so...scared!").

Jack's favorite noise is now "woof, woof."  He says that any time he sees a dog, sees one of his stuffed animal dogs, hears the word "dog," or I think any time he even thinks about a dog (this happens frequently).  I'll definitely get video of that soon, because he puts his whole head and body into the effort of saying it, and unlike many words at this stage it's fairly easy to understand, even by people who don't spend much time around toddlers.

His second favorite word is "keys," which sounds like a slightly spittle-filled version of "dees."  Jack has always loved electronic things with buttons.  Cell phones are tops with Blackberries the best of all.  A few weeks ago he managed to sit through almost all of a church service without a peep because we let him take the remote with him.  This from a boy who sees maybe 15 minutes of TV a week.  But keys have been quickly moving up the rungs of coveted items to play with since we moved back to America.  Now that we have cars (unlike in London), keys are much more interesting to Jack.  "Why?" you may ask?  Because car keys generally have red buttons, and those red buttons make cars honk and lights flash.  Some babies might be scared by such commotion.  Not Jack.  He loves it.  He's even more thrilled with Nonna's keys that have a button to make her car's trunk pop open.  

When we go anywhere, Jack is always pointing out people's keys.  This can be great while standing in line at Subway or Target or the grocery store--Jack says "dees" and points, the person holding the keys smiles and remarks on how clever and cute he is, and presto 30 seconds have passed in which I've been holding Jack without having to struggle to keep him from trying to jump out of my arms.  At other times his fascination with keys is not so convenient.  The week before the Mass of the remote, the guy in front of us put his keys on the pew, so Jack squirmed and pointed and yelled "dees" every time we stood up and he saw the keys.  I had never realized just how many times we Catholics stand up and sit down.  Poor Jack was so tormented.  

Now for the random thoughts section of this post.  We finally have a lawn!  Our sod was supposed to be put in a week after we closed on our house, but frequent rain delayed that until about a week ago.  But now we have several feet of yard.  Tiny by Midwestern standards, but it's a massive garden by London's take, and even fairly good sized for New England homes.  With the addition of sod, Jack has been introduced to the world of sprinklers.  He jumps right into the spray with no hesitation, regardless of what he's wearing.

We live in a row of 10 brand new houses, the earliest of which was completed last August.  Our neighbors are great.  We certainly can't replace Rich and Stacy and Kaia (Stacy, puzzlingly, keeps laughing when I say the house next door is still for sale), but we know everyone and we've become friends with several of the families.  Two more families just moved in this week, so Jack and I are off to be the welcome wagon this afternoon.

On a very random note, about thirty minutes ago I started reading "The Feminine Mystique" for the first time ever.  I'm not quite sure how I got this far in this life of mine without having read it.  But even reading just the first five pages, I am floored that it was written all of 45 years ago (when JFK was still President!).  It could very well have been written last year.  It's incredible.  So after having reading Perfect Madness and starting this and having tips on a few other good liberal mommy tomes, I've decided that I need to start a feminist stay-at-home moms' book club, because I'm dying to talk about the issues raised in each of the books with other like-minded women.  I'm just slightly worried that it might be a little hard to find membership for this bookclub...