doel dit

contrary to the received wisdom of child psychologists, rather than regress in my development with the arrival of oliver, in some areas at least i'm coming on in leaps and bounds. i guess that makes sense considering the amount of leaping and bounding i do. my vocabulary is increasing daily. not only can i now correctly identify and pronounce a number of colours: red, black, blue, pink, yellow, green, i'm also getting more specific about 'bob'. as of yesterday for example, the picture in my last post is a 'digging bob'.
my best friend Hobbes finally has a name other than 'this', as indeed do i myself : doel. one phrase that's becoming increasingly useful is 'doel dit' (joel do it). this might apply to making toast, spreading honey, taking a photo with the digital camera, putting on a dvd.......i'm quite technologically minded - or is it that i just like pushing buttons?

bob!

"bob!!!" I exclaim loudly. this is one of my favourite things. in fact all things bob are my favourite, sometimes we see them in the neighbourhood. i'm such a boy

olly's here

mom kept asking me why she had such a big tummy. I always said "baby", and stroked it gently. I know what babies are, I see them around on the street. now we have a baby of our very own. he's called oliver, and I love him.

daddy showed me this photo on his camera and said who's this. I pointed and said "baby", then pointed at me and said "dole". it's kind of fun having another little guy around. although I have to say he can be a little noisy when I'm trying to watch my favourite documentary about tractors. Julia the midwife came in yesterday to take some blood out of olly's heel – bluuurgh. olly wasn’t really excited and cried quite a bit. I went in and looked all compassionate for a few seconds, but eventually enough was enough. "bye guys" I said, shut the door and got back to watching farm trucks and tractors.

here's the oliver blog

normal service required

when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is rattle the bars on my cage (well, actually the gate across my bedroom door). if it's before 5.45am, this rapidly summons a parent who sends me straight back to bed to do more sleeping, if it's 7.00am a somewhat amazed looking parent emerges with a bottle of milk remarkably quickly. this might have something to do with the whole night's sleep they just had. more normally there is not much response at all. at this point I shout a little to remind them I'm here, Greg and Andrea love that, as their bedroom is just above me.

this morning I was somewhat surprised to discover it was Donna who answered my early morning call. I think I led her through the routine pretty well. my bottle leaked a bit, but tasted good, and she was happy to respond to my call for 'book'. we unloaded the dishwasher, and I told her whose mug was whose, and where stuff went. I got the milk for her for her cup of tea, we played trains and she did pretty good for a girl.

it was kind of weird mom and dad weren't around. Roxanne soon appeared to take me out for the day. being a fully qualified mom, she remembered to take all the things I really need for a good day out. a change of clothes so I could go puddle jumping (I taught Katrina a thing or two), my sleeping bag and Hobbes so I could nap, and my bouncy castle was already installed at her house. we had loads of fun – I was far too busy to talk to dad when he called, and even went to Science World in the afternoon where there were loads of buttons to press and things to play with.

when we finally got home, mom and dad were back with baby oliver. they all looked almost as tired as me, so they must have had a busy day too. oliver had got me a couple of presents – he must have known it was my birthday.

thanks for looking after me Donna and Roxanne, you're my friends.

yuk.......gone

the latest challenge at bathtime is to see just how much water i can bail out of the bath, using the very unpromising implements i'm currently allowed in there with me. despite the moratorium on pots, buckets, scoops etc mom and dad generally take their socks off before entering the bathroom. actually mom doesn't usually have to bother since she can't reach her feet to put them on in the first place, but dad was really kind today and put her socks on for her before we went out into the frosty park this morning.

so there's mom, balancing on one foot, trying to reach the water in the bath to check if it's the right temperature, and i'm patiently waiting beside her - stark naked and getting chilly, i might add - when all of a sudden mom notices her foot is getting remarkably warm and wet considering i'm not even in the bath yet. she looks around to see me grinning at her happily, saying 'yuk'. was it my fault, oh yes!!!!

later, mom comes to check on me before she gets into bed. she opens my bedroom door, and leans over the gate. the gentle sound of snoring emanates from.....well, i'm not in my bed, nor am i on the cushions carefully placed beside my bed in case i fall off the mattress, nor am i on the floor by the door. somewhat confused, mom turns the kitchen light on in order to shed some light on the situation. am i in the corner by my drum kit? no. behind the door? no. ahhh......there appears to be a body in the sleeping bag sprawled out across Bob the Builder in the middle of the big double bed. is this the first episode of sleep walking, or just a small boy looking for his daddy in the middle of the night?

Hallowe'en

maybe it's because they don't like pumpkin (roasted, in pie or otherwise). maybe it's because no one dishes out free english chocolate, it's all nasty canadian stuff that i can't eat, and they won't. perhaps they just don't like getting dressed up in fancy dress, although mom's doing a good impression of a very fed up, fat person who's clothes won't do up any more. either way, like the truly serving parents they really are, they dressed me up in my fireman's outfit and we hit the streets. actually we went out in the car, since mom can barely walk, but we visited church where i impressed the crowds with my ability to throw rubber chickens, not to mention my skills on the putting green. from there we went to Dunbar Heights church where i got to throw vegetables, something i've had plenty of practise at, although these were plastic. they tried to make me stand very close to the target until they saw just how lethal my throwing arm was. at this point it was time to come home to bed, where i emptied out my bag of goodies and spent some time wandering around the house, trying to decide where to put them. i've never had my own stash of candy before. i know all the places mom hides her's, but it's no good using one of those places is it!

2 at last

for those of you to whom these things matter, at my birthday weigh-in i was 32lbs and 91cm tall. That's after eating birthday cake, if you consider that relevant. 'cake' is my new word of the day. highly appropriate, don't you think? my standard response on hearing the word birthday is 'Bob cake'. It's been a long time since my party, but my Bob cake obviously left a huge impression on me - another way of saying i'm scarred for life?

I got to open a whole load more presents today: some Bob slippers with flashing lights, a Bob truck, a Bob tool belt, a red Bob fleece, two Bob birthday cards with badges on, a transporter lorry with cars a.k.a. Bob.............

mom and dad got me a train set which is really cool. it's got a mountain and bridges and everything. unfortunately mom didn't produce a younger sibling for me, so she's not much help at the moment when it comes to trying to put the train track together. we went shopping on saturday and dad chose (me) some remote control cars, and a new coffee machine for him. i'm not sure which he's had more fun playing with.

boundaries

rarely will i let dad type a blog entry, but you need to hear this one from his perspective - over to you daddy. joel

Liz read this intriguing article about toddlers not straying more than a certain distance from their parents, even if they are given freedom to do so. You see this, of course, with young children clinging to their mum's legs, or trying to get dad's attention, normally by doing something that they know annoys him. Also if you observe in the playground, the child will always be within good sight of a parent and tends not to wander off unless permission is granted.
So, we thought Thanksgiving morning yesterday provided the ideal opportunity to test the theory.

Trimble Park, a beautiful, well-maintained playground, next to a school playing field with great views of the city. There's a good fence around the whole area with only a few exit points. We sat, enjoying some autumnal sun in the paddling pool - sometimes filled with water - currently filling with leaves. Joel has the ball, as you can see from the picture (1). Joel kicks the ball out of the pool and starts ambling off away from us in the picture.

I wonder how far he will go?

Joel dribbled the ball offf towards the goal (2) looked back just the once to raise his arms, shout "goooaaal" and check we saw his score, he then made a beeline directly for the nearest exit (3) a good few hundred yards away, and didn't look back once to see if we were following or watching him.

I guess there always has to be one exception to break the rule!? I sprinted for the exit to meet him just before kicking the ball into oncoming traffic. Bless him.