The neighbors in the back orchard have a backhoe, not sure what they’re doing with it, but it has made more than a few passes past our back fence.
Oliver is fascinated by the “diggar!” and spent a large portion of Tuesday afternoon in his observation tower watching the progress. He insisted on holding Howie so that he could see too. “See Howie! See Diggar!”
I hate zucchini, I have always found it to be a revolting vegetable. Texturally slimy when cooked, mushy even when breaded and fried, zucchini was something I avoided – that and eggplant, but this post isn’t about that.
Up until about two months ago our home had been a zucchini-free zone, then P started to eat, and eat, and eat. So I started making my own baby food, which led to me reverse-engineering his all-time-favorite jar of mush “organic summer vegetables.”
Organic vegetables are easy to come by so I read the label: potato, carrot, green beans and zucchini.
Zucchini?! Really baby, can’t mommy get a break?
In Oliver’s world there is no “day” there is just “night” and “no-night.”
In the evening as the sun goes down it becomes time for “night.” In the morning, when the sun comes up and the darkness is replaced by light, there is voice, inches away from my face which enthusiastically announces “No-night mommy! No-night!”
The baby does not “sleep.” P is either “awake” or “no-awake.” No-awake is usually easily resolved by being poked at which point baby is “awake!” again. The baby does “nap” but when nap time is over, baby enters “no-nap” time, sometimes with a helpful poke.
There is also “no baby!” but that is reserved for when P gets into something of O’s.
At Christmas O got a camera from Auntie M, so far he’s run the batteries down, filled the memory card once, and taken dozens of nowhere close to in focus pictures. I was recently inspired to upload the most recent batch of blurry perspectives, and thought I’d share a few.
More of O’s fine work is now up in an album entitled Oliver’s Perspectives at my picasa.
Yesterday O turned 3, so today we celebrated with “choo-choo cake.”
Miss E and her family joined us to help celebrate. Together she and O made pinecone bird feeders, ran around the backyard, had cupcakes, opened presents, and generally had a very fun morning.
More photos of the party in the January 2012 album.
Oliver has decided he likes to Help! This is not a new feature, but it has become more pronounced as the months pass, and now that O is armed with his helping tower his rate of helping has increased dramatically.
O has also acquired the concept of “me tun” – after waiting patiently and watching me do something, he decides it is his turn to undertake the task. It does not matter if the task is vacuum cleaning, unloading the dishwasher, feeding the baby, pressing the buttons on the food processor or spooning muffin batter, eventually, if it is OK for mommy to do, it is OK for O to Help!
The challenge comes with balancing what is truly helpful and what just makes a big mess. We are working on finding balance in the kitchen: chopping cucumbers for the salad is truly helpful – he can manage to do so with a dullish knife, and it does not matter if the cucumber is a uniform size. I will not however, let him chop onions. Pressing food processor buttons is fine too, he’s helping make “foof” for “Pa-tik.”
Then there are things which require no help. The other day P slept late and I felt the need to express some milk. O came into the kitchen where I was pumping, declared “me see boob!” and then attempted to assist with the positioning of the shields. Thanks for the offer, but no help needed.
I try to have several activities through out the day that O can help with. This morning started with a trip to the grocery store where O helped push the cart, bag apples, and navigate to and select the ice-cream. This afternoon, during P’s nap time, he helped bake muffins lemon blueberry muffins.
Helping “cook!” muffins is a finer line: half an extra egg here, some extra salt there, batter dripped all over the counter – my inner baking perfectionist does not appreciate the mess, but the muffins came out tasting alright, and he had a lot of fun while helping “cook cake.” The recipe was fairly forgiving -it held up to my modifications and O’s input- and while they are unlikely to win any awards, they will make for excellent snacks through out the week.
A new baby joined our family this Christmas: Howie Baby.
Howie Baby* is a heavy waldorf baby doll**. It weighs about four and a half pounds, or about as much as Baby O weighed in his early days, and smells of lavender (O never smells of lavender unless he’s been pulling up plants in the yard). Continue reading
Until this evening O has been sleeping in one-piece Hannah Anderson footless pajamas, Carters snap-up pjs, or, on very hot nights, just a diaper.
Tonight marked the transition to two-piece pajamas, the Kirkland organic cotton ones from Costco (they’re $12 vs. Hannah Anderson’s $28-42 for a similar style). They are size a 2T and fit fairly snuggly (as child pjs should) and these are covered in rocket ships.
O was very excited and he zoomed round the living room. The pjs seemed to fit well, and he was thrilled by the rocket ship. When we got to his room he pointed to his ceiling fan (which has rocket ships on the blades) and to his shirt. After a little more zooming (and a story) he settled down to sleep with his turtle casting constellations on the ceiling.
Most of O’s old pjs have been boxed away for Patrick to grow into, when P is done with them, the survivors will likely end up on the nekkid dawg or the baby-clothes quilt.
About a month ago I discovered a really simple homemade play-dough recipe, and made two batches in Halloween orange. Once it cooled, it was an instant success. O enjoys rolling and cutting the dough, and it keeps him fairly occupied for about 20 minutes twice a day.
O also likes to build ships. These ships go through the air. They go “up-up-up” and “dum-dum-dum” and “zoom.” I asked him for clarification, they are not boats. Boats go in the wah-way (water), everyone knows that. Ships fie (fly).
Up-up-up! FIE!!!
O has a very creative imagination… and perhaps we watched a bit too much StarTrek when we had a round of Toddler Plague a few weeks back.
At the Waldorf pre-pre-school open-house Miss Donna stressed the importance of layering the children and having weather-appropriate outfits, including, but not necessarily limited to rain gear.
In September, I went to REI and picked up 2T-sized rain coat and rain pants on clearance, and then put off buying rain boots, he already had a pair that fit… they back in June anyway. June… October… they’re not that far apart.
With more rain in the forecast it was inevitable that at some point O would need to have appropriate footwear, so I hauled the boots out of their exile in the garage (they were crusted with mulch) and had O give them a walk around the kitchen so I could feel where his toes were.
His feet have grown since June.
They’ve grown almost two shoe sizes. From a 5 to somewhere between 6 and 7.
So this afternoon O, P and I went to the feed store where O insisted that his rain boots had to be red. Not yellow, or black, or turquoise, they had to be RED. We got a size 7 and thick cushy socks to help them fit better.
Of course, when we got home, the “wain boos” had to be put through a vigorous testing process. Fortunately (for him) it was raining, so all of his rain gear got tested. He stayed dry, it got wet, and the boots got mulchy.
I’m not entirely sure what he was doing, but he stayed out for a total of about two hours, he came in a few times, announced he was “all dum,” took off his outer layers and then changed his mind and went back out. Whatever it was he was up to, must have been very important.
I put some 3M hooks on the side of the counter by the door so the wet and muclhy would be contained. Depending on how well this works, I may add a few more for hats or other accessories at a later date.