After dire predictions of rain, it's been a beautiful weekend. Donna and the boy are taking a nap in his room and Sheida and I are lounging on the deck after a busy morning. Noah's usual Sunday morning includes 8atching Thomas the Tank Engine at 8:30, followed by Signing Time Kids at 9:00. He's really picking up the signs fast, which got us to wondering what foreign language(s) we should start looking into having him learn. He's such an instant sponge for ASL, how remarkable that very small kids have such an aptitude for learning. It must be because their only job right now is to learn, all day all night.
It's amazing where snippets and phrases and comments will pop up when Noah makes a connection between what he's doing now and what he did some time in the past. Kind of a fun riddle for us, actually, as we try to figure out why he said something. It's always logical, but not always in context.

It's not always a good thing to have our little boy being an instant knowledge sponge - there are certain pages in "Hop on Pop" we now skip, because he likes to act them out. Including "Jim Him - Jim is after him," where the boy Jim nips some creature on the tail. It's eye-opening to realize how often we observe violence - pretend and otherwise - or the tools of violence in our society. Last night's walk around the park was wonderful as ever, but I'm not sure what he took away from the big group of children (very nice kids I might add, very friendly to Noah) playing cops and robbers with fake guns, or the (again really nice guy) man around the corner carrying his semiautomatic rifle from his truck to his house. Noah even figured out, just from to our Muppets CD, that the "Muppaphone" consists of a musician hitting various muppets in the head. Once he started hitting his head with a book when we listened to it in the car, we realized what was happening. Are these innocent things? I think so, probably. But it takes a lot of work on our part to ensure Noah puts these images and ideas into proper context.
Of course violent imagery is common on television, incredibly common. A big complaint I have is that violent commercials are very widespread, even during otherwise peaceful programs, and thus very hard to anticipate. A good example is the Toyota Yaris commercial, where an insect made of fuel pumps (you have to see it) screams as it is crushed by a car, which then sucks out the insect's "blood" (gasoline). If Noah sees this, he'll be watching a creature getting crushed (the screaming makes it clear what is happening). Why is this necessary? And this, of course, not even mentioning the horrifying complicity of the news media for showing far and wide - with no warning, the graphic picture of that Iraqi militant we killed recently. Why?

Anyways spending the day getting life organized for the new baby. Laid some new carpet (hooray for the ReStore!) to replace that destroyed by our cats downstairs, cleaning and getting supplies ready, continuing to fall behind on weeding. Veggies from seed are now up, but many covered with chickweed. Our several columbine plants (from seed collected at a sea lion haulout 2 years ago) are now huge and has many flower buds ready to open. Primrose and Sitka rose and bergenia have faded but bleeding hearts are still going strong. Hostas are blooming and all the annuals look great, finally. Many aphids already on the birch trees - will treat selected trees so that our view from the deck doesn't become too depressing in July.