Tough love and the toddler's plate

We learned this morning that Ian apparently knows how to hug. He got a hug from one of the teachers at school and then started going from kid to kid giving hugs. When everyone realized there were free hugs being handed out, they rushed over. Ian tripped, though, trying to hug one of the twins and completely took her out, tackling her to the ground. All's fair in love and hugs. Recently Ian has also shown a distinct love of cheese. It's hard to tell because he's learned how to say "please" too, so you're not sure if he just asked for something nicely or demanded a cheese stick.

Dinner tonight was some burger dipped in ketchup, a cheese stick (also dipped in ketchup) and a ton of guacamole. That boy could eat his weight in guacamole. Oh and two bites of a cookie. He loves cookies (or any round biscuit type thing you call a cookie) so we try to meter those out. He can have all the sweet potato "cookies" he wants, though.

Casting call

Ian has started figuring out that people besides Mama and Daddy have names. Unfortunately we named our dogs Mollie and Dante, which to a toddler sound like Mommy and Daddy so it's a little confusing. He also calls Mollie "Bob" because our neighbor's dog has that name and they're both black. Actually, most dogs are named Bob as far as Ian is concerned.

We've been working on the grandparent names but Grandma sounds a lot like Mama and when we say GrandDaddy he just looks at us like we're messing with him. Grandma sounds more like Meemaw. And Granddaddy is Gdiddy

We skyped with Nana and GrandDad tonight and he tried those names. His version was DadDad and Namanama (which is how he says banana so I'm sure he thought we were crazy calling this lady Banana).

And he knows Ian is his name. So we do a lot of talking in the third person.

Sharing

We went to a birthday party this afternoon and there were lots of kids there. Ian was super shy at first but warmed up to the idea of the toy car. Unfortunately, there was another little girl in a pretty brown dress who was interested in it as well. And we had our first experience of a "NO!" standoff. It's hard being a little kid. A bit later he did manage to share the car with another little boy. I don't think he got much choice, though. Ian was just driving along and this half naked little dude with shaggy hair and piercing blue eyes flagged him down and then hopped in. As they motored across the yard, diaper dude put on his green star-shaped shades. And I heard the "YEAAAAAHHH!" from CSI: Miami in my head.