Tuesday 28 June 2011

Independence at Ikea?

Today, the boy, myself, my SIL and her two little ones headed off to Ikea for a shopping trip. Since my SIL is on mat. leave (her newest addition is not yet 2 months old), we decided to make an outing of it during the week when the store would be less busy.

Ikea has this great supervised play area with a ball pit (babies love the ball pit), colouring tables, and more, that you can leave your little one for an hour while you get some shopping done without constant interruptions, or small nosey people checking out everything you're putting in your cart.  The boy & I talked about leaving him there, and he seemed game to go for it, and so, slightly nervous, I went over, signed in him, got my pager in case they needed me urgently, and watched him go. It's not the first time he's been left anywhere, he goes on his own to the nursery class at our church, and he attends a little play group once a week by himself, but this was the first time he'd been left with people and kids he didn't know, and he didn't bat an eyelash.

He took off straight to the ball pit, and immediately started playing with another little boy that was there. It was incredible for me to watch. My little boy all grown up and content to go off on his own and make friends and play. I managed to get all the things I needed at Ikea, and apparently, the boy found some independence there too. Now if only they carried something to stop me worrying about him!

Thursday 23 June 2011

Summer Fun with his Best Friends

In a brief moment of sunshine today the boy wanted to go outside and have an 'ice pop'. We make home-made smoothies and then freeze them as our healthy summer treat. Our current batch is strawberry/banana/mango with vanilla yoghurt - very tasty if I do say so myself!

When the boy eats the ice pops (blame this name on something that happened with his favourite characters - Charlie & Lola) he can be quite messy, so the rule is that they have to be eaten outside and he has to wear a bib. He's fine with these rules, and would eat an ice pop outside even in the pouring rain or the freezing cold if he could! I chalk this up more to his love of being outside than how good the ice pops are.

While he was eating his treat today, he insisted on sitting on our deck's step which put him at the perfect hight for our two dogs to insinuate themselves for some ice pop. The boy loves our dogs, and they love him back (especially at meal time when his seat is the perfect place to sit under), so he was more than happy to share with them by pouring the melted part of his pop onto the ground for them to lick up! They were happy to oblige by cleaning up after him, and that meant that there was less for him to accidentally drip on himself (which is what normally happens) and the dogs got a treat too, win-win!

BFF's!

Monday 20 June 2011

Feeding Bunny

The boy has a stuffed rabbit that he got when he was born, that he still loves. It's from the fabulous line of French toys called Kaloo (The amazing Mastermind Toys carries them - you can check out what they've got here) Being very inventive, this rabbit is called 'Bunny'.

Bunny comes with us around the house, and occasionally has to join us for meals. Normally it's just lunch or a snack that Bunny gets to eat with us, but tonight, Bunny joined us for dinner.  Hubby had to go out to a meeting, so it was just the boy and I for dinner. I decided that we would have a special treat and have grilled cheese sandwiches and veggies for our dinner. As I was serving it up, the boy announced that we needed to get Bunny, since "he really loves grilled cheese" 

So Bunny dutifully came and joined us, and of course he had to have a bib on too so that he wouldn't get dirty! Bunny apparently really does love grilled cheese, cucumbers and peppers, but he's not so fond of pickles. It's interesting because this means that Bunny has his own personality, because the boy loves all of these things. The boy even wanted to get Bunny his own dessert, since apparently Bunny didn't want to share with the boy - what a scam artist! Besides, everyone knows that Mummies get the extra dessert for all the hard work of putting small boys to bed!

Friday 17 June 2011

Ever wonder what sound a Yak makes?

I have to say I have never really given much thought to Yaks. In my mind they were always just furry cows - we don't see a lot of Yaks in the wild around here.Today, thanks to the boy, I doubled my knowledge of them.

Recently the boy has gotten into playing Go Fish - he really loves it, and is pretty good at it,  he actually beats me quite often. We have an animal Go Fish game, and to tweak it a bit, we added our own rule that when you make a match, you need to make the sound of the animal. Today the boy matched his Yaks, but didn't know what noise they made, so thanks to the trusty internet, we searched and found out - they grunt. The boy loved it so much that he continued to pretend to be a Yak for the rest of the morning, going around grunting all the time.

So if you're intrigued, here's the link to the clip we watched to help learn about the noise of a Yak. It's never a dull (or quiet) moment around here!

Monday 13 June 2011

Sound Effects

When he was little, the boy used sounds for things instead of words. Our vacuum cleaner was a 'wvooooee' (imagine it sounding like a vacuum), a drill was a 'brrrrrzzz' and so on. And it was deliberate, the sounds were all distinct and only used when referring to whatever he was talking about. It was quite cute and endearing.

Fast forward to now, when he talks non-stop, day in day out, and with a vocabulary that often surprises hubby and myself. He no longer needs the sounds to describe the items, now the sounds are an accompaniment as he's 'using' the items. If he's 'making' bread he does an almost spot-on impression of my bread maker, or if he's cutting the grass or using the weed whacker, it comes complete with lawn mower or weed whacking noises. But his most used toys at the moment are his tools. When he's doing fixing jobs around the house and using all his tools he (apparently) has a number of different drills, and they all make different noises. Often he'll classify them as 'this is my quiet drill, this is my loud drill, and this is my really loud drill'. And of course, guess which drill he uses most often - I think I should buy shares in advil!

Thursday 9 June 2011

My son the biker

The boy got a bike for his birthday, and loves to ride it. We mostly ride on our street (a very quiet court), but today he decided that he had to ride it to my parents house - about a kilometre away. He's doing really well with his pedalling, but I do have to keep reminding him every two minutes to focus on what he's doing, and not to be distracted by a lawn mower, or someone walking their dog on the other side of the street, or even just an interesting looking yard!

It's so cute to see him with his helmet on, little bits of hair escaping from the back, as he pushes off and goes. He looks so grown up and it's a little bit heartbreaking to realize that he's not my baby any more. I'm sure I'll feel the same way when he's asking to borrow the keys to my car!

Bye Mum, see you later!

Monday 6 June 2011

A play date with Nana (Bloggers Give Back)

"Why are you home Mummy?" That was what greeted me when I walked in the door after a busy day working at George Herman House for the Bloggers Give Back project (check out the site, and all my old posts here, here, here, and here). The reason? The boy had had a fantastic day with Nana, she'd brought him a picnic lunch, they'd played baseball, played in the park, had smoothie pops, and more. Basically he'd had an amazing day doing everything he wanted!

I had a fantastic day too. I met a lot of great ladies involved in the Bloggers Give Back project, and we really managed to turn the garden at George Herman House into something beautiful for the residents. We assembled all the furniture IKEA Canada had donated, got the beautiful Tonic Living Cushions, and some planters and flowers from the Home Depot Canada.  Now there are seating areas, an outdoor dining table, and places to relax. Just what everyone needs in a green space, especially in an urban setting.

Now I'm already looking forward to the fall, when Frank Ferragine AKA “Frankie Flowers” comes out to help us finish off the transformation at George Herman House. It will be another great day out for me, and another fun play date with Nana for the boy.  It'd just be nice if he at least pretended to miss me next time though!






The debris being cleaned up

The Ikea Falster Bench and Arholma chair with cushions from Tonic Living


A great place to hang out now and relax!

Saturday 4 June 2011

A Pillow House

I've mentioned before that the boy has a very active imagination  and he uses it constantly. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of who or what he is at any given moment. It's a lot of fun, and I really do love hearing what comes out of his mouth when he's creating his own worlds.

For the last 4 days I've had to step over a pile of pillows on the floor in my bedroom. For a change, it's not because I made a mess, or hubby hasn't put something away, it's because it's a house. The boy was playing in my room the other day while I was doing some tidying. The next thing I knew he'd dragged in a whole bunch of pillows from his room and proceeded to build a 'house' with them on my floor. When I tried to pull one out to start putting them away, I got told, "No Mummy, that's the door!" and so it stayed where it was. Later that night when hubby tried to do the same thing, he was told he was pulling on a window.

Thankfully our bedroom is big enough that we can leave them where they are for now and  just step around them. The boy has come in to check on his house a number of times, and has even re-adjusted it to make it more secure! Hopefully he'll move onto something else soon, and we can put the pillows away, so I can regain my floor!



A house (apparently)

Thursday 2 June 2011

Re-Runs

I was just showing hubby and the boy some videos of the boy and what he'd been up to the past few days (running through the sprinkler, riding his bike, playing his drums, and going on his scooter - not only is the boy busy, he's also spoilt!) The boy loves watching himself and in fact when you take a picture of him, one of the things he wants is to be able to see it right away - thank goodness for digital cameras!

After we'd watched the home movies, we asked the boy if he wanted to play outside for a bit to see if we could start to tire him out - he's had some ridiculously late nights recently - and of course, he agreed. So I grabbed the camera and we headed outside to see what he wanted to play with. He decided that it was time to go out on his scooter. Then the boy told me I had to film it, and that I had to ask him the same questions as we had asked him in the video we'd all just watched.

After he'd finished scooting, we came in and he announced that he now needed to play drums and sing K-K-Katie (another clip we'd just seen) So now I have two almost identical movies of the boy, doing identical things, saying almost exactly the same things, just a few days apart. I guess I should be grateful that he's wearing different clothes in each movie!