It seems that the last month has wreaked of misfortune: Mr. Cobra's appendicitis; a crappy birthday; a stressful trip to Austin and losing (sigh); proposal after proposal going out without any projects coming in; clients paying big bills weeks late; a flat tire resulting in an entire new set of tires, getting sick, getting the 4k bill from Mr. Cobra's hospital stay on top of the 1k from Dexter's ER visit in January. I'm sure there's more, but those are the biggest. It hasn't been a very good year thus far. I'm trying desperately to keep my chin up and remain optimistic, but it's getting harder.
Dexter is keeping me amused. We went on a shopping trip to get some shoes. It ended up being a 3 hour excursion and he got a couple outfits on top of his new shoes. I haven't gone shopping by myself with Dexter very much. It's mostly because Mr. Cobra is around when the stores are open and we have time to shop. However, this time he was still nursing his cold. I was getting stir crazy, so I went alone with the full expectation that we would be headed back home in an hour. Dexter was awesome. He proved me so wrong.
I was able to head off all of his tantrums and he was amazingly cooperative having a stranger help him get his shoes on. He sat down and watched some cartoons while I shopped at a nearby clothing store. He even got a sticker for being a good boy. He didn't lose his temper until we were 20 ft from home and t-minus 20 minutes and counting to dinner time. After all that shopping, he just couldn't wait any longer to eat.
We went out to eat and had sushi. Dexter had tamago. He ate it so fast, that I was sure he'd dropped it on the floor. He tried Japanese iced tea which he liked so much he stole my straw. Dining out with a toddler is fun. As long as he doesn't make a huge mess and doesn't scream then it is honestly fun.
It was also interesting because I don't get to compare Dexter to other kids very often. We sat next to another family with a young toddler boy. I'm horrible at estimating ages, but I'm sure he was 6 months to a year older than Dexter. It's generally thought of as bad to compare kids and I try not to 99% of the time, but it's nice to get a sense of how he's developing. People at the stores we were shopping at were commenting on how verbal Dex was for his age. The kid next to us was talking, so I listened to how verbal he was. Dexter was talking just as well as him if not better. I thought that was pretty awesome. It's hard to know when I just see Dexter and barely any other kids thanks to the recent craziness. Dexter proved the point when he started saying "Tamago! Tamago!" and pointing at the picture on the wall. Now he's picking up Japanese - LOL.
