Buttercups and daisies

We've been learning some pretty cool stuff at preschool recently:
We've fed caterpillars until they were so fat they made themselves cocoons to sleep in. When they woke up, they'd turned into butterflies we could release in the park.
Then we had an excellent story about tadpoles that turned into frogs. How cool is that?
So there we were - mom, ollie and i - going down west 10th: i was clearing the way for mom and ollie on my bike, they were coming along at a more sedate pace with the stroller, when suddenly i stopped in my tracks. "Wow mom, look at all the buttercups". There was a whole garden where they were growing nothing but buttercups all over their lawn it was ever so pretty. "Mom, did you know if you pick buttercups and put them into water they turn into daisies?"

words that make a mother quiver....

"i know mom, i've got a GOOD IDEA"

a phrase we seem to be hearing quite often at the moment.....unfortunately. why did we encourage our son to think for himself?!!!

Granny May (10 May 1916 - 19 May 2008)

Mom's been busy the last couple of days looking up flights to england, while dad's been away at historymaker. unfortunately great-granny died before mom was able to get to the airport. i told mom she didn't need to be sad, as now she could share my granny.
"little" played a far greater role in the family than her nickname would suggest. maybe one of the reasons she loved me was that finally she wasn't the smallest person in the room?


Granny May loved singing, especially the old war songs from her youth



I think she might have been an opera singer, if circumstances had been different

watching 'the bocce boys"

our next door neighbours are a household of graduate students who must have plenty of time on their hands: not only did two of them run a marathon recently, they spend an inordinate amount of time playing bocce.
sometimes they let me play with them, but not too often as i'm rather good. i think my enthusiastic cheering interrupts the flow of conversation somewhat, too. now that ollie wants to join in as well, mom went and bought us our own set of bocce balls. we could play in the back garden, but authentic bocce happens out the front, just like next door.

things you never thought you'd hear your 3 year old say....

(the first in an occasional series)

on arriving home from preschool, when asked what he'd like to do next joel replied: "it's a lovely day for croquet, mommy"

actually he said "croquery", but he meant croquet!

Swimming lessons

I've just graduated from my Sea Turtle class today, so now i'm officially a Salamander. Starting on Saturday i'll be having lessons again with my friend ethan - he's missed out on the last set of lessons with Chris. Chris is definitely my favourite swimming teacher i've ever had.

Today i managed to blow bubbles for five seconds, i went right underwater looking for fish, i floated on my back for three seconds all on my own, and THEN....i started kicking and i was swimming all on my own. After about five seconds i realised chris wasn't holding me and i started sinking, but i was doing great until then :)

that's what they do

investigating the underneath of rock in the back yard: the damp dirt reveals the expected combination of ants and wood louse.

dad: "there's a worm with lots of little worms"
joel: "that's what worms do"

dad couldn't argue with that and made a mental note to check up on how hermaphrodites reproduce.

is this the precursor to the birds and the bees?

joel then watches "the magic school bus" and is treated with an amazingly detailed and visual account of how a hen lays an egg with full internal pictures. they hinted at the rooster's part in the operation, but declined to show it.

i guess we're lining up for an investigation of a beehive sometime this summer??

the best fun 50 cents can buy

Spend 50 cents on this

use this for inspiration

and behold:

with thanks to the chillis for their autobiographical funk-rock piece: "good time boys"

Canucks

A few weeks ago mom and dad went out in the evening to listen to a man talk endlessly about vacations and finding the money to go away on holiday. As their reward for listening, mom and dad got two tickets to a Canucks game.

If you move in the right social circles i'm sure there are easier ways to get tickets than listening to a timeshare presentation, but as games are generally sold out months in advance despite outrageous ticket prices this was mom and dad's first (and possibly last!) chance to go.

It was such an exciting occasion i got back up when they arrived home to find out who'd won (the Canucks, of course) and then mom let me take her ticket back to bed with me so i could sleep with it on my pillow. what a great mom.

School report

mom and dad failed their first parent-teacher interview by bringing me along. apparently that's not the right thing to do. ah well, you live and learn......

jasmina and caroline think i'm basically a pretty nice guy. i play well on my own and with others, i don't appear to have any particular friends, my favourite things are the sandbox and the water table (no news there!) and i like help putting my shoes on. jasmina wouldn't mind if i wore my wellies right up until the end of june, as i'm ever so quick at putting those on. i'm perhaps a little bit cautious about new things, wanting to check it's safe before i have a turn but mostly i'm turning out OK.

now if only everyone would stop nagging about using the toilet........

Dad takes a day off

Tuesday is kind of a funny day for dad to take off - but hey, i'll take what i can get. Ollie and dad went out for coffee in the morning and then we went out in the afternoon while ollie had a nap. We had SO much fun:
we rode our bikes, played some soccer (dad only had to rescue the ball from the sea once), did some climbing, took some photos




.....maybe we had too much fun?

Batman and Robin

eclipse of the moon

joel and mom go outside:

Joel: "look at the moon. it's turned into a planet.
wow. look at all the stars. can we sing twinkle twinkle to them?

twinkle, twinkle little stars, how i wonder what you are
up above the world so high. like a diamond in the sky.
twinkle, twinkle little stars. how i wonder what you are.

the stars are happy now. can we go inside and get warm?

that was SO beautiful"

when i'm big....

i'm going to drive in my car to the toy shop and buy lots of piggy banks.
what are you going to do with them?
i'm going to put money in them and take them to people's houses.
and what are they going to do with them?
then they can go to the toy shop and buy lots of toys for them

Valentine's day

Valentine's is BIG business in canada. it's a little bit confusing, because my soccer coach is called valentinos, and so i thought he was having a birthday party with a soccer ball cake, but apparently that's not the case.

I had a special envelope at school as a mailbox for all the valentines my classmates gave me. we had to give a card to everyone in the class or no one. mom didn't want to help me make 18 cards (plus 2 for the teachers) so we settled for none. i did get some interesting ones though: a spiderman one wishing me a 'webful of excitement', a barbie one and a cars one, as well as hearts and flowers and mushy stuff. we even had to colour a heart at school as a valentine's for our moms.

mom and i went to the library in the afternoon and i had my backpack with me containing mom's card. someone's granny stopped to talk to me while i was doing some computing, so i took the card out of my bag and gave it to her. she asked if she was meant to keep it and of course i said yes. my card is now proudly displayed on a granny's fridge. it's the first valentine's card she's had for years, and it made her very happy. i told mom the old lady looked as if she needed something to make her happy because she looked a bit sad, and i can always make mom another one if she wanted.

Going to Safeway

ollie and mom and i go to safeway's on a regular basis. they've got a great fire truck that doubles as a trolley. ollie and i drive around the store going brrrrm, brrrrm while mom tries to grab a few things we need. it's not long before ollie gets fed up, and wants to walk. that works for a few minutes until he starts pulling things off the shelves at which point we go and visit the cookie lady. if i ask nicely she gives ollie and i both a chocolate chip cookie ! this serves as mom's three minute warning - just long enough to dump a couple more things in the trolley and it's time to go.
however.....today we went to safeway on a field trip with school. we went inside the freezers where they store the icecream. we spoke to the butcher and the flower lady. we even went to the bakery counter but..... ...the cookie lady pretended she didn't even know me!!!

if i had my way, any time is dora time

i'm getting really good at telling the time on my thomas clock. i know when it's 7 o'clock (time for breakfast) and 4 o'clock (time for Dora). i'm a little more vague about when bedtime is though!

it was too early today

dad said at 7am that he was going to church to play music with the youth band today. i told him it was too dark. "why is it too dark to go to church?" asked dad. "because you can't see the blue colour". honestly dad, what a silly question. he went when it was a bit lighter.

it snowed.....

there was so much snow overnight that mom was a bit worried about driving up the steep hill to school, and we weren't sure the teachers would be able to get there either. we decided that we'd all go together.

only one other person was there when we arrived, and no teachers, so we decided to go into the park and build a snowman as big as ollie. we didn't have a hockey stick for him though - unlike the one we built in our garden.


when jasmina and caroline arrived they had great idea. jasmina emptied out the water table, and dad filled it with snow. jasmina filled some pipettes with food colouring and we were already ready to paint snow - it was great. later on we used snowballs to do painting, too.

School photograph day

My very first school photo was kind of a success. Unlike some of the kids i did at least have it taken. In the class photo i'm almost looking in the right direction, even if i didn't manage a smile.

I'm sure dad would have done a better job on my hair if he hadn't been away in Calgary (at the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada Roundtable for Leaders in Youth and Young Adult Ministries (or something like that with the addition of the words: emerging and forum 2008)), and mom didn't even think to use make up to cover the scar on my forehead. Ah well.......i guess it's a true representation of the real me

Robot

Painting a robot is a somewhat messy experience - and no the paint doesn't really wash out

Soccer classes

Finally, after weeks of waiting the big day eventually came. i've been looking forward to starting soocer classes for SO long. first of all i had to wait until school finished, then it was time to go on an aeroplane to england to visit granny, then it was christmas, then it was back on the aeroplane again, then i had three days of school , then i had just one more day to wait until FINALLY it was soccer time.
Mom and dad and ollie all came with me to the big gym at the community centre. The coach got out a big net of soccer balls and lots of goals. But........there were so many kids and they all seemed so big and so good at soccer it was all a bit overwhelming. i cried.
mom came and stayed with me for a bit, and then dad had a go too. i did try and kick the ball from time to time, but there was always someone else trying to kick it too. coach did lots of skills and tricks but it all happened a bit too quick for me. the best bit was at the end when dad was the goalie and i got to score some goals. i don't think ollie will be coming next week, because he kept trying to join in and cried every time mom stopped him from playing with the big boys.


we went out to lunch afterwards too - that was pretty good, although i could do with a bit more practise at using chopsticks