I was home alone for a while with Anthony today and went outside with the intent of, among other tasks, planting some radish and spinach seeds, hoping that is was not too early in the year to do so. I was addressing some other matters first, then realized that Anthony was traipsing around in the small area I had intended for planting, apparently enjoying the moist soil sticking to his shoes. I shooed him out and proceeded to painstakingly plant my seeds. Satisfied with the job done, I moved on to work with my compost pile. When I finished there, I went to put away my shovel and--naturally, I suppose--saw Anthony returning to his "stomping" grounds, where I had planted my seeds.


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Our 12-year-old daughter saw Disney's "Pinocchio" being shown on a television at a discount department store recently, and wailed, "Not Pinocchio!". She told me that, despite the volume being turned down, she knew exactly what the characters were saying. Later at home, she displayed for my wife and me a knowledge of script and scene that might not be matched by the original screenplay writer. She proceeded to duplicate that performance with dialogue from "101 Dalmatians". I ribbed her about the pathetic nature of her existence.

She has been subjected to viewings of certain movies to the point that she has memorized them because Anthony has watched videotapes of them at the exclusion of anything else. He rarely wants to sit down and watch movies anymore, but he was recently loitering in our family room near the TV, so my wife opened a drawer of DVD's for him. He specifically chose "101 Dalmatians".