By the time we arrived, Jonathan was asleep, so he didn’t get to see Dad-o until he awakened. When he did, he walked into Dad-o's office for a joyful reunion, though he was quickly distracted by the view from Dad-o’s window: “Swim!” At this point I was at the grocery store, so he had to wait about 20 minutes, but as soon as I returned I heard, “Grandma home! Go swimming!” So we did.
Jonathan was a good sport about getting out of the water before he was ready, and about eating our pad thai dinner with chopsticks. At first he called a piece of shrimp “mushroom” but adopted the corrected name as soon as I informed him. After dinner we went shopping and Jonathan now has a lovely new pair of running shoes—a.k.a. sneakers.
After we pulled into the garage, Jonathan asked to be able to “’tend to drive.” So I stayed with him in the car while he took over the driver’s seat and pretended to drive. All went well for a while, as he talked about fastening the seat belt, and pointed out to me that his feet couldn’t reach the pedals. He steered, and adjusted the knobs, and learned how to turn the overhead lights on and off. Then the garage light, which is turned on when the door opens and turns itself off after a while, suddenly plunged us into darkness. I turned on the car light, but Jonathan was unsettled enough that he decided it was time to go inside and find Mommy.
Then I made a mistake. I asked him to stay where he was while I got out of the car and turned the garage light on so we could see to get into the house. The mistake was in shutting my car door. I turned on the light, and Jonathan, in his effort to open his door, locked himself in the car! I wasn’t really worried, since the keys were inside the house with Heather, but tried to talk him through unlocking the car. He knew exactly what to do, and kept pressing the button, but he was pressing it in the “lock” position. Finally, through chance or thought or instruction, I know not which, he pressed it to “unlock,” and we went into the house.
There are several contrasts to their visit a year ago. For one thing, Daddy's not here, and for another we're not locked down by a hurricane. We’re sad about the former, but the latter is a great improvement. This year, Jonathan made himself at home immediately with the toys in “Jonathan’s Cupboard," took them out, called them by their names, and began to entertain himself for long periods of time, providing delightful running commentary along the way. His language and vocabulary have grown so much, even since we saw him in July. Heather and Jon’s habit of not modelling baby talk is evident. One exception is “choo-choo train,” which he occasionally uses instead of “train.” He picked that up from a book; some authors have a lot to answer for.
