Puppy Love

To say Tooie loves puppies is a laughable understatement. He LOOOOOVVVVES puppies (fittingly, he was born in the Year of the Dog). He has supersonic puppy detection hearing and can hear a puppy barking about 5 miles away. He can see puppies out the car window who look like mere specks of dust to me (and keep in mind, he rides backwards in the car).

So we were shopping for a birthday present for a party E and M were invited to (at Chuck E. Cheese, to my GREAT dismay, all fodder for another entry once it's over, I'm sure) and he saw the puppy of his dreams. We brought it home of course. Here he is wearing the puppy and doing his favorite thing, saying goodbye to tissue paper as it gets flushed down the toilet:

Another shot of the same activity:

Running from the Mommy Papparazzi (who can figure out how to spell those Italian words, after all?)

Not even a great puppy backpack can keep you happy all the time when your sentences are only one word long:
As you can see, he likes to wear the puppy for all kinds of activities (like making playdough), and he has to have it in the car, and he prefers to have it at bedtime:
The best part about this puppy? The "tail" snaps on to the back of it and it becomes a BABY RESTRAINING DEVICE!!! What evil genius came up with this??? Yes, I have purchased a baby leash. I figure that once Tooie 2 arrives on the scene I won't have enough hands to deal with kids in the parking lot, and I can't stay home forever, so Tooie's puppy will have to start using his powers for evil and not for good come June.

In other Tooie news, and speaking of evil genius, the boy is a madman in the kitchen. He loves to cook, or should I say "cook." It starts at the sink. He'll announce "water," "cup," "bowl," "poon," and he expects that his wish is your command. Then he fills up the bowl with the cup and stirs vigorously with the poon while muttering "cook cook cook" to himself. Until such time as I hear a loud splashing noise that indicates about five gallons of water have just been poured all over the counter and floor and we move on to another activity.

Like eggs. If any eggs are in sight he yells "egg! crack! egg! crack!" until you let him choose an egg or two and give it a desultory whack against the bowl. Next stop, salt.

Don't leave a whole container of salt on the kitchen counter. This is my only advice for you.

Ditto sugar.

Appliances are his latest love. He adores the salad spinner. He likes to put small toys in it then lie down next to it on the ground so he can watch the inner basket go round and round while he pushes the plunger. The other night, Marmot Dad was making a salad, and Tooie was playing with the spinner. He noticed something was missing, so he ran to the kitchen, got a stool, pushed it over to the salad bowl, grabbed a handful of greens, and ran back to put them in his spinner.

He also just discovered the "food processor" attachment to the blender (yes, that would be the same blender that he broke just last week). He likes to put all the parts together (sans blade) in order and yells "help!" if he can't figure out one of the pieces. Then he pushes the buttons. I let him push the buttons tonight when I was actually using it, and it scared him so badly that he had to run screaming from the kitchen.

It happens that way sometimes to even the best chefs.