Bluh.

According to daycare reports, Alex refused to run around during playground yesterday -- just sat down on the sidewalk and didn't move. When they took his shoes off, they found his right pinky-toe was red and swollen. Matt checked it, and he can wiggle the toe, so it's not broken, but he doesn't want us touching it.

The shoes aren't too small for him (if anything, they're a smidge big), so that's not the problem. It's possible that someone stepped on his foot, or dropped something on it. Or a piece of mulch got into his shoe and rubbed it raw. Or there was something in the sock. We have no idea.

I took his shoes and socks off when they got home last night and wouldn't let him put them back on. (Alex is a very shoes-on kind of kid, so he was pretty grumpy about this for a while.) He sat on the kitchen floor while I was cooking dinner and refused to get up and walk into the living room to watch Sesame Street like usual, though he got up at one point to put something in the trash, and when dinner was ready, he walked to his chair normally.

This morning, his toe looked normal again. So we'll have to see what happens, I guess. If it happens again today, I guess we'll need to get him a new pair of shoes and hope that helps.

As long as I'm talking about Alex anyway, he's acquired a new vocabulary word: fantastic! You know, I had my doubts about this season of Sesame Street, because some of the words and themes seemed a little advanced for the toddler set, but apparently I was H. W. Wrongy Wrongenstein.

Alex speaks very clearly for a two-year-old, and though I credit much of that to a constant stream of demonstration from his sister, he's also all about the fifty-cent words: humongous, miniature, exquisite, fantastic -- and he uses them correctly. (He hasn't mastered "metamorphosis" yet, though. Just a few too many sibilants and syllables for his mouth to handle just yet.) He's all about the science: "Trees have bark!" he tells me, nearly every morning. "Do we have bark? No, we have skin! Trees have leaves! Dinosaurs eat leaves! Do we eat leaves? Yes! I like lettuce!" (He does, too.) He's all about counting and shapes: "Triangles have three sides! Hexagons have six sides! Octagons have eight sides!" The other night, he held up a piece of chicken and told me it looked like a fish. He knows his letters and numbers and loves to look at books. It took him mere weeks to get the colors down, and now he's impatient with color questions. He's pushing hard at comparatives (e.g., bigger/smaller) and starting to get the hang of them.

Now, you will never hear me say that Penny is not smart. She's reading on a 3rd-grade level and always seems to have her nose in a book.

But while it's too soon to tell for certain, it's entirely possible that Alex may be something a bit out of the common way, as far as brains go.