Dude!

At first I thought Arthur wanted to go to a bookstore. He kept saying "Borders, Borders." But then he followed it up with a hearty "Dude!" and Mark explained that he and Arthur had seen a bunch of skateboarders at the park. "Dude!" is up there on the list of Arthur's favorite words.

In other word news, Arthur was very excited the other night and kept saying, "Give. Guys. Hats. Sticker." Apparently the security folks -- who wear wide brimmed hats -- for the Lane Transit District gave Arthur a junior police sticker for his vest when Mark and Arthur rode the bus for entertainment Tuesday night.

Arthur seems to be going through some sort of growth spurt or else he's cutting molars. He's fallen asleep at 9:30 AM twice this week (about two hours ahead of his normal nap time), and he's been going from zero to sixty to zero to sixty a lot. On the "engages in symbolic play" front, this afternoon as were were playing outside, he decided that the trunk of his kid-sized plastic car was the mail slot in our front door. For about five minutes he brought me imaginary mail from out of the trunk, and I handed him imaginary mail from my pocket for him to put into the 'mail slot.'

Then he got bored and found a trowel to throw around and a rake handle to trip over.

Our back yard is looking better; although I've noticed that my potted dwarf rose has a bunch of aphids on it. I found a wild ladybug in the grass next to rose, but when I placed the ladybug near the aphids, it scuttled to the end of the plant and flew off. Hmph. So much for natural pest control.