"Dass fonnee!"

So I'm in Connecticut now, at least until I drive to the end of the street or so, at which point I'm in New York. And we don't have our furniture yet, which is kind of a shame, but there are worse things.

The important thing is that the family is together again, which means that I can write about Jack again, because after all I am in fact changing diapers. And on a side note, let me just say it's great when I've buttoned him into his sleeper and am about ready to put him in his crib when he suddenly says, "Poop again," and I say, are you poopy?, and he says, "Yah!" And so he is.

The best thing about seeing Jack here is that he's really happy. I think he was pretty happy in Colorado, but clearly he loves his Grandma (he wakes up from naps now calling not for Daddy but for Grandma - excellent), his Grandpa (who takes him to feed the ducks on Sundays), loves his cousins ("Ranna? Lidsdy? Tacey?"), loves "Uncle Ekan" and "Aunt Taffy" -- for the uninformed that's Reanna, Lindsay, Stacey, Ian, and Cathy -- and loves his family. We drive down the road and he says "Aunt Taffy's house?", he calls for Grandma sometimes, and when he talks in a half-awake state he sometimes runs through all the names he can remember, which includes everyone here and sometimes "Baba" (Grandpa) and "Neve!" (Niamh) And I think, living here, he'll get to know all the rest of those relatives pretty well, too.

And since he is happy, he laughs a lot, and he's now at the point where he announces his feelings on these things. And everything, really. "New house!" and "Big pumpkin" have been popular observations in the week I've been here, as has "Dass Fonnee!" with a big grin, also known as "That's funny!" Or occasionally, if we dare to presume that something is funny that he himself isn't sure about, it becomes "Not fonnee," which he expresses by shaking his head and looking serious.

He runs about the house and plays with his school bus ("My buhs!"), he asks for his milk ("My milk!") and shows an interest in Daddy's coffee ("My coffee!"). No, I tell him, my coffee. He laughs and says "My coffee," and then, "Daddy coffee."

Today we went to get pumpkins at a nearby pumpkin patch, and he walked around amidst them saying "more pumpkins" and "big pumpkins" and all that. He had some pretty strong opinions about them: I'd point one out and he'd say "No," and shake his head, or "Yuh," and we'd either take it, or I'd rule it out - a bad spot, or mushy, or what have you. And in the car on the way back he'd say "My pumpkin," and I didn't dispute it, just smiled, because like everything it was, in fact, for him.