Watch out for the bear patrol!

The other day we had a funny run-in with a group of university students as we were walking down the street. Baby boy was wearing a shirt that says "Bear patrol" on it. When he saw the students approaching, he stopped dead in his tracks and pointed up at one of them -- a young male. The guy took one look at his shirt and ran away, shouting teasingly "Oh no! Let's get out of here -- it's the bear patrol! And I'm a bear!."

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Today we went shopping for a new bathroom faucet as part of our mini bathroom renovation. As we walked through the bathroom display rooms, the little guy pointed at every toilet and yelled "pooh pooh" at the top of his lungs.

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When he pointed at our car and said "auto" the other day, I thought that some of the French words we have been teaching him had started to sink in. Not! It turns out that he was actually pointing past the car, at the bike, where he could see his helmet hanging from a handle bar. Daddy has been calling his helmet "hat-o" as a knick name. Now anything that goes on your head is called a "hat-o."

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I accidentally left a cup of coffee on the coffee table on morning, and went into the kitchen. The sound of silence from the living room alerted me that someone was up to no good. When I went to investigate I found baby boy trying to take a swig from my coffee cup. When he realized I had caught him red handed, he dropped the mug (without spilling, thankfully), and took off running.

BBQ season is finally here

Thank God! I was beginning to think that winter was going to last forever. Instead, we skipped spring and went straight to summer.

On the weekend we went hiking with Scooby and his folks. We tried our best to keep him from drinking dirty pond water.

The little guy has learned some new tricks. He now spins around and makes himself dizzy for kicks. Thankfully he hasn't tried that on a full stomach yet....

He does high fives.

He sings the "backpack" song from Dora the Explorer (often replacing the refrain "backpack, backpack" with "tee tee, tee tee," "dadda, dadda," or "pooh pooh, pooh pooh."

He climbs up on anything and everything (but yells to be rescued because he doesn't know how to climb down again.)

He pulls the cord in the garage and makes the door go up.

He's also picked up some new bad habits. Screaming, throwing stuff (including tantrums), harassing the plants, not listening etc... Some days I want to pull my hair out. Is this a preview of the terrible twos? If it is, we're in for a rough ride!

Here we are in April

and this is my first blog entry this month! Finding time to write has been an enormous challenge these last few weeks. But I won't bore you with all the details.

So, what's new? Lots.

The little guy is saying so many new words every day that I stopped counting. My favourite is when he says the word "lemon." I need to get it on tape and share the audio clip with you so you too can hear how cute it sounds.

Grandma came for a short visit last week. While in town we went to the farm to see the animals. It turns out that this little shy stage he's going through applies to animals as well. He absolutely freaked out when he saw the cows. In fact, the only animals he wasn't scared of were the bunny rabits, baby goats and barnyard cats. Which reminds me of a funny story. A cat jumped into the back of baby boy's stroller to escape an annoying kid. We gave him a free ride to safety. However, our little stow away got a little too cozy in the stroller so we had to boot him out.

Now that spring has sort of arrived (brrr....cold) we've been doing a lot of park hopping. The slide is very popular these days, as is climbing around like a monkey. We've also been carting him around a lot in the bike trailer -- another favourite activity. Most kids kick and scream about having to wear a helmet. Not our little one - he demands to wear it, even if we're just going for a walk in the stroller. He points at his helmet and yells "Hat! Hat! Hat!" I guess we can't complain about that!

In other news, we finally caved in and babyproofed the snack cupboard. He protested loudly for a couple of days, but then got over it. You have no idea how much this has improved my quality of life. The weather is bad enough outside. I really don't need for it to be raining crackers inside the house! The constant pot, pan, and everything else rummaging has levelled off a bit. We bought him a basket of toy vegetables. Now when we're cooking we give him a spatula and a frying pan and let him go wild making pretend stirfries.

I'll post some new pictures soon. Happy belated Easter everyone!