Today was Della’s last day at Rita’s daycare. It was a traumatic experience. For me. Della seems okay with it. We’ll see how she feels Tuesday morning when I drop her off at the Caterpillar Club.
Here is Della on her first day of daycare in May 2012: a mere baby. The kind of baby she would say, “Hey, baby!” to today.
Anyway, Rita and her sari-wearing team have probably spent more play time with Della than any of us purported Della fans. They are really nice ladies, and we’ll miss them always.
A lot of undocumented stuff going on around here:
-Della got a pink baby with a bottle. She shares the bottle with herself and with me. I try to show her that there’s a baby in my tummy by holding the bottle up to my belly button. Now she holds the bottle up to the baby doll’s belly button, so I don’t think she’s getting it.
-Della got her own rib on Saturday. She tried to feed the rib to the baby. Now we have a ribby polyester baby with barbecue stains I can’t get out.
-We say “how about” more than we realize. How about a bath? How about a snack? How about a nap? How about a walk. Now it’s one of the few things Della says. For her it is also an affirmative exclamation. “Della, how ’bout some cheese?” “How ‘BOUT!”
-She also starts a lot of her nonsense sentences with “Um…” so I guess we say that a lot too.
Here’s an action shot of Della coming off the pool slide.
It might be that Della is not so much interested in babies as in using baby as a slang term. “Hey, baby!” When Steve dropped Della off at day care this morning, he told Rita, “She’s really into babies these days.” Rita said, “Yeah, she calls all the kids baby.”
A friend gave Della this car seat for her Duckie and other little friends.
She decided to try it out herself.
A developing ritual: Della likes to have a few minutes alone in the car at the end of the day. I don’t blame her! We are all up in her business, most times.
Steve says Della is looking like a “party animal” and “miniature John Candy” in this outfit. This isn’t the first time Della has been compared to John Candy.
Della is 1.5, and she is interested in babies. She calls Duckie “My ba-BY!” This morning she laid him down on the changing pad and showered him with diapers. She points to babies in the street and calls out to them. At the playground last week, she charged a 13-month-old. Sometimes she cuddles her dog-faced sippy cup and calls it baby.
Anyways, here is Della being 18 months.
Happy birthday, Adrian!
The kazoo is perfectly suited to Della’s level of skill and ability. She likes it so much that later when she was crying because she had to get her diaper changed, she grabbed the kazoo and kazoo cried. It really helped her express her emotions.
The family split off tonight to go to their own separate things. Steve went to the Mad Decent Block Party at Merriweather post. Della and I went to see Urban Funk at Grist Mill Park. Here we are at our lady show.
We saw a poodle and a kid with a tricycle and an ice cream truck. Della took all the cards out of my wallet and spilled a bottle of water on both of us. She carried a bottle cap around and pretended to take small sips out of it.
This is basically what the audience looked like:
Steve’s thing had a different vibe.
He says, “I am an old, old man.”
della and george 