Hugs and "pishes"

He's an everyday mimic. Especially when it comes to daddy. One day after carefully observing daddy put on his deoderant, he opened up the bathroom cupboard, pulled out a bottle of peppermint foot lotion, and pretended to slather it on to his own armpits :)

Often when daddy is cooking something on the stove, he lifts up the pan and gives the sizzling contents a little shake. The little guy has taken to "pretend frying" in his own toy pan. He throws in his veggies (and sometimes a farm animal or two), adds some pretend sauce and then gives the pan a little shake in the air. When he's finished, he rests the pan on the table,waves his hands over top of his yummy creation and says "hot."

**********************

He's become quite the conversationalist with his close friend and companion "Brock the bear." Brock, for those of you who haven't met him yet, is a rather large and plush Teddy bear with a big red bow around his neck. Last week, daddy overheard him talking to Brock. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi Bear!"

After a slight pause, he picked him up and said "Hugs and pishes?" Bear was, predictably, very agreeable to the idea.

************************

Baby boy is the biggest dilly-dallier on the face of the Earth. Pretty much everything distracts him. A tree, a flower, a pine cone, a puddle, a rock, an airplane in the sky etc... Walking even the shortest of distances feels like a marathon to me. I've tried every trick in the book to try hurrying him along.

Walking ahead saying "bye-bye" doesn't work. He knows we would never actually leave without him.

Chasing him just causes him to run around in circles and giggle, leaving us no further ahead.

Enticing him with the "next great thing" works intermittently at best. I'm forever shouting back at him "Look up there -- there's a squirrel!" or "Come see the pretty flower over here." But he's on to me....

The one thing that does work is the "stone toss game". I throw a stone down the path, and he chases it. Then he throws it. Then I throw it, and so on and so forth. So far it's the best trick I've got!

***********************

I've always been a big fan of the musical, Annie. We recently bought the movie because I just had to watch it again for the 4 billionth time. So, of course, I've been running around the house singing "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow, you're only a day away!"

Baby boy has his own rendition. He sings "The water, the water, I love you, the water."

*************************

Sleeping in on the weekend is something I try to do. Unfortunately I am up against strong resistance in the form of a 20-month-old. Turning on the television might buy me five extra minutes of sleep but not much more. After that, baby boy tries out various strategies to try to get me up and moving.

Last weekend he opened the bathroom door, grabbed my glasses off the counter, and handed them to me. I thought this was pretty smart thinking on his part. He knows that I won't step foot out of the room until I have my glasses on. This was just his way of helping speed up the process.

********************************

Although I am very pleased that Barnyard Dance has finally fallen to the bottom of the book pile, his new favourites are becoming old very quickly.

On the Farm is now among his top 3 literary picks. It's one of those book where you have to turn the wheel to find the horse food, the basket of apples, etc... Hubby and I have read it so many times now that we've taken to making up creative, new versions of the story. We try to outdo each other with our silliness. The other day I overheard hubby reading the book and just about died laughing. Here is what he said:

"Turn the wheel to find the delicious, green, steaming pile of pig slop." And then, in the voice of a horse, "Mmmm...this is wayyyyy better than so-called 'horse food' they're always trying to feed us around here."

Coming in at number 2 on his reading list is Baby Hugs. This is one of those touch and feel interactive books that toddlers like so much. This particular book has scratch and sniff flowers in it. He loves shoving his nose right up to the page and taking a big whiff.

But by far his top book choice of the moment is Goodnight Moon. We were given no less than five copies of this book as baby gifts. Lucky for him there is a copy in virtually every room! When he wants us to read it he starts repeating "moon, moon" over and over again until we cave in. When we get to the part about the quiet old lady whispering hush, we pause and let him say the "hush" part. It's very cute.