Mischief, Thy Name is Dominic

A disclaimer before we begin: We love Cate, and she gets attention too; she just doesn't do anything mischievous--well, yet.

Story #1:

Matt's glasses have been missing for two months.  As many of you know, this isn't really a surprising event in our household.  He put off looking for them for a few weeks, figuring they would just turn up somewhere.  By the time he actually became concerned that they were really lost instead of just kind of lost, he, of course, could not remember when he had last had them, where he had been, and, arguably, what exactly they looked like (fortunately, we had a similar episode in South Bend, where he thought he lost them because the glasses he saw didn't look like his...in the end,  however, they did turn out to be his.  Was that stripe on the inside always there?).   

After a month or two of "looking," Daddy thought to ask Dominic, "Do you know where my glasses are?" Dominic smartly answers, "Nope."  But then he immediately begins to look for them.  He peers under the table, "Nope," he says, then he peeks under the piano, "Nope," again, and then he flings open the closet door, pokes his little head in and decidedly says, "Nope...there" (translation: nope, not there).  

Story #2

Dominic likes to try to call Daddy, "Matthew" and has been doing so for weeks, to our chagrin. Recently, however, Dominic has figured out that Mama = Donna. When she's in her room getting ready, he stands at the locked door and cries out, "Mama, Mama, Mama" each with different, varyingly pathetic, intonations. When that fails, he switches to "Donn-u" like a doorbell, then "Don-UU", up on the end, then "DONN-UU", when he gets really desperate. It is hilarious, although I try not to let him know that I hear him doing this... Our tactic is to only respond to the "proper" name, i.e. Daddy, Mommy, Mama, or Papa. He has also been known to yell for "Hon-eee" when he wants someone.

Story #3

Dominic has taken to including his "friends" in his various activities.  This exclusive club includes his stuffed animals Doggy, Pooh, Tigger, and Elmo. He puts them in the chair and "reads" to them, gives them to Cate when she's crying, pretends to feed them snacks, and, of course, takes them all to bed.  

Yesterday, we had some visitors.  Dominic warmed up to them very quickly and was eager to show off his friends.  He made three trips from his play area to the living room.  First, Doggy and Pooh.  Then, Tigger and Elmo.  Thinking he had all his friends, I was surprised when he made a third trip back to the play area.  He gets his little photo album of absent friends and family and runs to put it in the pile with all his other friends.  "Friends," he says, and starts to put all five on our visitors laps.