Night Shades

Dexter has a bunch of sunglasses that he has accumulated over the years. In his OCD fashion, he has determined that different sunglasses are for different occasions or circumstances. For some reason, the tacky ladies' sunglasses that he picked out in a drug store last year are for "night time".

Dexter had the opportunity to wear his "night shades" at Daddy's festival gig last night.  It didn't seem to matter to him that the sunglasses made everything darker...he enjoyed watching Daddy play and gave him "lots of good claps."

All Access Pass

Dexter got to hang out behind the stage before Daddy went on with James Curley's band last night. He loved watching the other band play from back there.

And he loved watching musicians from the other bands hang out and get their gear together. As Dave was pulling his drums out of their bags, Dexter excited shouted, "Look! A drum tower!"

Maze Craze

Many kids' menus have activities printed on them and Dexter's favorite is always the maze.  If the menu doesn't have a maze, I have to create one for him.  He's addicted.  His approach is to use one crayon to find his way all the way through the maze.  Then he asks Daddy and/or Mommy to do it using the same crayon. Then he uses a different color crayon and has Daddy and/or Mommy do it with that crayon, and so on and so forth. Here he is with Daddy at dinner last night doing the maze.

Four on the Floor

Dexter and I dropped Daddy off and picked him up from work yesterday because the timing of his evening festival gig made coming home between work and the gig impossible.

When we picked Daddy up at work, Dexter got to play the drums. Despite the stool being higher than the one with his drum kit at home, Dexter managed to reach the bass drum pedal and put down "four on the floor" while banging away with the sticks.

In addition to keeping a pretty decent beat on the bass drum, he made full use of every drum and symbol available.

Negotiating Relationships: Step 1 - Use Words

Dexter had an impromptu play date with Ellerie and Reid on Friday.  It gave Dexter a chance to show off Railroad City and the "cars" in the basement as well as his favorite local park.  It also gave me a chance to see that Dexter's class of five other boys and one girl may not be providing him with enough diversity when  it comes to interacting with others.  He was pretty rough and I needed to remind him that he needed to be more gentle with Reid who is much smaller than he is and that he needed to use words to let Ellerie know what he wanted rather than dragging her around.

"But I want to hold her hand!"

"I understand, so you should let her know that's what you want and ask nicely if she wants to do that too."

"Ellerie, um, can I please hold your hand?"

"Sure!"

Thank you, Ellerie, for making that lesson an easy one!  How to deal with rejection will have to wait for another day. The kids ended up looking like a little family with Ellerie and Dexter pushing home Reid in his stroller.