let's have a big round of applause

I've been paying "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bakers man" with David for months--clapping my hands and clapping his hands--because a book told me to and we are pretty much raising David by the book. He enjoys it, but hasn't shown any real aptitude for the manual dexterity needed to participate. He couldn't clap.

I just finished a 36-hour business course and we had a "graduation" ceremony Monday evening. Jaime and David went. You can perfectly imagine the event--men and women in suits giving inspirational speeches about how most of us will fail but we shouldn't feel bad about that because failure is part of success--even though most of us will never succeed unless we change our definition of success to "my wife didn't divorce me for bankrupting us"--and being an entrepreneur is so great. There were about three-dozen of these short speeches followed by applause.

I've mentioned before that I think Topekans like to applaud more than average and this evening was no exception. At one point I looked down at David on my lap and realized "hey, he is a Native Topekan, look at him applaud." Yep, he was clapping his little hands. Now, it's his new trick.

But he is not content just to clap. What he really likes to do is just grasp his hands in front of his face and hold them there. This cracks him up. He grabs them and giggles and laughs about what he has accomplished.

David: "Look! I and hold this thing here with this other thing and that thing with that other thing! Cool!

Me: "Yes, David, very cute, now move them so I can put food in your mouth. Come-on, just lower them a bit"--smack!

David: "Look! I can smack things like that spoon and then go back to holding these things like this!"

I also forgot to mention that he can finally shove his toes into his mouth, but that was weeks ago.