Do you want to play toes?

It's our latest game. We dip our feet in the kiddie pool and then play "toes" by walking around the deck leaving toe tracks. He could play toes for hours :-)

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Like all children his age, the little guy goes through a lot of "phases." Here are a few of the latest:

- Reading phase (he's alway liked books, but he could literally sit and read 50 books in a row these days. I am truly sick of Curious George and Elmo and Big Bird playing the alphabet game!)

- The "hot breakfast" phase. Every morning he says, "Mommy, I want hot breakfast." By that he means instant raising and cinnamon oatmeal.

- The "new" tee tee phase. Instead of dragging just his yellow tee tee (aka blankie) around, he also carries around a yellow receiving blanket. At the same time. Wherever he goes.

- The "sock" phase. Heaven forbid I forget to put his socks on before bed (even if it's the hottest night of the year). If I ask him why he wants socks he says, "But I need them!"

Olympic fever continues

If baby boy could get a face to face meeting with the International Olympic Committee he'd probably make the following suggestions to rename events:

1. Boxing would be called "peefing."

The other day he asked me if I wanted to "peef" with him (translation: box with him). He put his rubber boots on his hands and said, "Look, I have peefs!" Later he brought me a pair of runners and said, "Here you go mommy. You put on your peefs on your arms."

With peefs on, we had a little boxing urrrr...peefing match. Truth be told it was actually more like playing pat-a-cake.

and....

2. Diving would no longer be called diving. It would be called "the jumping in the water" event. And diving boards would be called the "blue blocks that the girls jump on."

We're in!

We've been on the waiting list for our neighbourhood nursery school for a couple of months. Parents in my neighbourhood talk about it as though it's the best nursery school on the face of the earth. Many of them waited months and months to get their children in so I thought his chances of getting a spot for this fall we slim to none. But today they called me to say they have a opening for him starting in September. It will be every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00 - 11:30. His caregiver will pick him up and take him back to her place in the afternoons. Sweet!

It's a cooperative nursery school so the price is really reasonable. The reason being, of course, is that all of the parents are required to do volunteer work. There is snack duty, laundry duty, and volunteer in person duty too. I'm kind of looking forward to it. My only concern is that three days a week may be a bit overwhelming for him. I guess we'll wait and see. We can always withdraw him and try again next year if it isn't working out.

Our little nest

In the summer our comforter usually ends up balled up on the floor at the foot of our bed. And apparently that is just where baby boy likes it to be. He's converted it into his "nest." One morning I asked him what he was doing in his nest and he told me very matter of factly, "I'm sitting on my eggs." He also likes to use his nest for collecting "eggcorns" and for sleepovers with "Buddy bear" (aka Whinnie the Pooh) and various other stuffed friends.

But perhaps his favourite nest activity is to curl up and get all cozy and then pretend he's a kitten. Every once in a while he pops his head up and asks, "what you doing mommy kitty cat? What you doing daddy kitty cat?" Usually our response is, "We're sleeping baby kitty."

Olympic fever

The little guy has Olympic fever. While watching the gymnastics on tv the other day, he turned to daddy in wide eyed excitement and exclaimed, "I want to do that!"

While he may not have mastered some of the more difficult tumbles and flips, he is pretty good at somersaulting (forwards and backwards). And, he even did a diving somersault! But like all good gymnasts he knows that points are lost on the landing so we've coached him on the "stick the landing" pose. We just yell, "Stick the landing!" and he puffs out his chest, stretches his arms up in the air and gives a gigantic grin.
He then says, "I'm doing the Olympics!"

The vacation is over

Back to work tomorrow....sigh....

Our second week of vacation was pretty awesome. We went on fun outings everyday after a leisurely sleep in (if you call 7:30 sleeping in....). Our week included a BBQ picnic with LD, RD and SD, a trip to the farm with ML, AL and CL, exploring the outdoor portion of the children's museum, a trip to the equestrian park to watch a horse jumping competition, a full-day biking adventure, walks through the market, lunches out, a BBQ pizza party etc... All in all it was a very fun and relaxing week.

Back from the beach!

Week one of our vacation is now over. We just spent a week at a beautiful cottage on a quiet lake near Algonquin Park (photos to follow once we buy more memory for the computer and I can actually download the pics). I think that it was the laziest week we've spent since before baby boy came along.

Here are a few cottage highlights:

- Every day we went for a nice long canoe ride. Last year baby boy was terrified of the canoe so we were delighted that he turned over a new leaf. He even helped with the paddling! On our first canoe ride he was overwhelmed with excitement. With heartfelt emotion, he kept saying "Thank you for the cottage!" and "Are we on vacation????"

- When we told baby boy that we would be going to the cottage, it came with the promise of seeing lots of frogs. At first he was disappointed -- where could they all be? But we soon discovered their secret hideout - in the grass and rocks near the front of the cottage. On one of our frog encounters, he said "He's real hungry mom. He needs a peanut butter sandwich."

- Lucky for me, Daddy was the only one who saw any snakes at the cottage. He just about stepped on one while crossing the deck one day. I asked him what it looked like and he said he'd never seen one like that before and that it was "plaid." The next day he encountered another plaid snake. I kept teasing him that it must be some distant relative of the plaid lochness monster from that crazy pinochio/wizard of oz show we used to watch when we were kids. Does any one else remember the plaid, tea drinking lochness monster????

- The little guy's imagination knows no boundaries. While outside with daddy he said, "I saw a snapping frog (kind of like a snapping turtle, only a frog) and a hammerhead tee tee (tee tee is the name of his favourite blankie)." When asked for some additional details about what the snapping frog was up to he replied, "He was pumping and scrunching." So, to all of you who are reading this, beware of the elusive pumping and scrunching snapping frog -- it's very dangerous!

On the morning we were set to head back to the city the little guy was very disappointed. I assured him that we would go on a little adventure on the way home. That idea seemed to appeal to him, so he gave it some thought. When we got loaded into the car he proposed his own idea for an adventure.

"We're going to Constanchayo," he said.

"Where's Constanchayo," daddy asked.

"It's in Canada."

"What do they have there?"

"Things."

"What kinds of things?"

"Ummmm....horses. Grey horses, black horses, and orange horses."

"Are there people in Constanchayo?"

"No, just horses."

Unfortunately we weren't able to find Constanchayo on the map...


- I may have mentioned in an earlier post that the little guy is terrified of moss. We have no idea why, but he stops dead in his tracks whenever he sees it. The cottage grounds were full of moss, which turned out to be a good thing. The continuous exposure made him relax a bit.

"Moss is a plant," he kept telling us. "Moss can't hurt you."

To prove he was right, I made a point of patting the moss and telling him it was soft and fuzzy like a cat.

"You pat the moss, Mommy?" he asked every time we came across a moss patch. I must have patted moss a thousand times a day. When I invited him to try, he refused (he's still not completely cured). But, he did stomp his foot on some moss once, and touched some lichen on a stump near some moss. That's progress, isn't it?

- Hubby and I decided that we were going to put toilet training into full action while on vacation. So far we've failed miserably.

Daddy taught him how to pee in the woods, figuring it was a skill that all young lads should acquire. Unfortunately, baby boy thinks that the peeing is not limited to the side of a tree. He figured the middle of the deck and on the floor of the cottage were also good pee spots. And every time he would do a little sprinkle, he'd come up to us with a wide grin and demand a candle and a treat. One step forward, two steps back (again!!!). At this rate, he's going to be in diapers until he's a teenager!