Nature

Asher loves to be outside.  He can be suffering any ill and going outside will make it all better.  If you say the word "outside"  he will scamper gleefully to the door and bang on it.  If you open the door for any reason other than to take him outside, he gets very upset.  He would live outside if we would let him.  

One of the things that Asher really loves about outside is dandelions.  I figure this is a pretty good thing for him to love since most people probably won't be upset about him picking the ones in their yards.  Often, as soon as I unleash Asher upon the great outdoors, he will run to the nearest clump of dandelions and start picking like mad.  He likes to hold the dandelions, set them on top of things, rip them to shreds, and put them in his mouth.  This last one leads to a lot of me saying "not in your mouth, please" over, and over, and over.  At least he's getting pretty good at obeying that particular command, which means that I spend a lot less of my time chasing him around and physically removing dandelions, and various other objects, from his mouth.

Many other things about outside that Asher loves are rocks, sticks, dirt, leaves, and long grass.  He treats these things pretty similarly to how he treats the dandelions.  He is quite the egalitarian little burrito.  This, of course, leads to more repetitions of "not in your mouth, please."  

Becca, the six-year-old who lives on the other side of our backyard fence, and who often peers over the fence to chat with me and watch Asher's various exploits, asked me one day if Asher liked nature.  I told her that, yes, he did indeed like nature, and that he particularly liked to eat it.  She thought this was very funny.  Becca has a baby brother, and therefore knows an awful lot about how babies work.  She said her mother told her that the second rule about babies is everything goes in the mouth.  I said that was certainly true. 

"Do you want to know what the first rule about babies is?" she said.

 

"What?"

"If a baby is sleeping, leave him alone."