Lawn Shovelling

Daigoro loves to shovel snow. He'll actually get upset when he sees that the plows have been really efficient at clearing the highways - he was on the brink of tears when he was describing to me in the car how "the trucks with the shovels were clearing all the roads."

So tonight he got to stay with his ba-chan and gi-chan and shovel snow to his heart's content. He shovelled the walkway, the driveway and, in a little bit of overzealousness, started to shovel my parents' lawn as well.

Kenshin is experiencing something which is disrupting his sleep and making him wake up in the night again. Judging by the redness in his cheeks and his running nose, we're thinking its something to do with his teeth again (apple-red cheeks and runny noses seem to herald teething quite clearly for Kenshin). He's also developed a scaly, reddish rash on his calves and thighs which appear to be eczema, though we're not entirely sure.

Yesterday Daigoro was thrown into fits of laughter when he started putting on my battered brown fedora and Marli and my mom would say, "hey, it's daddy," and then when he took it off again they'd say, "oh, it's Daigoro again." Later, he found my father's slippers and they'd say, "oh, now it's gi-chan!" He thought this was hilarious, but when he put on both the slippers and the fedora, the women would say, "oh no, now we don't know who it is - is it daddy or gi-chan?"

Daigoro thought this was the height of modern comedy and repeated it for about ten minutes.

Kenshin is learning certain verbal cues for things - "a doi doi doi doi" is "I want that."

"Amaaaa." is "here, take this thing which I am giving to you.

"Uh-huh, uh huh!" (accompanied by head-nodding) is "yes, I am doing what I want to be doing," or "yes, I like what I now have in my hands."

"Uh-ohhh," is "something has fallen/broken" or "I think I have done something wrong".

"Nah!" (accompanied by twisting his head and body violently away from a proferred food item) is, of course, "no, I don't want this; how can you possibly think to offer this to me?"

He also seems to be increasingly happy to interact with Daigoro - the two of them thumping around the house chasing each other while laughing delightedly is a great joy for me.

Daigoro has been a bit of trouble lately at suppertime. He's become more and more squirmy and fidgety at meals, which obviously reduces the amount of food we manage to get into him. Today we reached the limit of our tolerance and buckled him into his booster with the warning that we will now buckle him in every time he squirms and does not sit properly in his seat. We'll see how effectively this solves this problem, if at all.

Ghosts n' Gobbling

(no, not "goblin" - "gobbling")

Daigoro wanted to be a ghost this Hallowe'en. Since putting a sheet over your kid and cutting eyeholes is apparently a bad thing for safety/visibility reasons, I took a makeup kit in hand and painted my best scary skull face on him.

Apparently it was scary enough to prompt a lot of comments from adults. Daigoro loved it. Our Kenshin had to content himself with an explorer's helmet and some play binoculars.

We managed to get him to ration his Hallowe'en candy over the course of a month, which felt rewarding.

The usual start-of-winter cold viruses ran rampant through our family, making mid-November quite unpleasant. Fortunately, though all of us were sick concurrently, none of us were bed-ridden at the same time (though Ian and I both had days in bed on different days).

For whatever reason, Daigoro has been more and more difficult to feed at supper and occasionally lunchtime. Kenshin, though usually a bottomless pit of appetite, has suddenly developed a screaming-fit-throwing aversion to bibs, which makes clean up and dinner time somewhat trying.

We attended the Santa Claus parade in Markham this past weekend. A good time was had by Daigoro, who seemed most amused by Mr. Peanut, but Kenshin was pretty unimpressed by the whole affair and spent much of the parade being either wheeled or carried about by alternating father and grandfather comforters. He perked up and paid rapt attention at the passing of marching bands and other sources of music (carollers, speakers playing music, etc.). That boy loves music.

Speaking of which, Kenshin has developed the often amusing but sometimes pathetic habit of crying to himself to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or "Goodnight Ladies". I believe he finds it comforting when he's feeling upset. He's actually good at carrying a tune, which is harder than it probably sounds, I think.

Daigoro is excited about the Advent calendar given to him by his Mamie. The countdown to Christmas is at the forefront of his mind - this past Sunday after waking up, he blearily looked around and asked "Did I miss Christmas?"