Currying favours

When in doubt, make curry. That's my feeding mantra with Dex. He loves the stuff and we have the stained shirts to prove it! Got some April showers today so comfort food was required. I decided to make him a chicken curry with mushrooms. Served with couscous, it proved to be quite popular. Bye, bye organic House of Mongrel cotton shirt with the peace sign. I don't think I'll ever be able to get tonight's stains out.

Couscous is another mother's best friend. Boil water. Add couscous. Cover for five minutes. Fluff with fork. Sometimes I get a little fancy and add some chickpeas and other stuff, but most of the time, that's all I do. It's awesome stuff and Dex loves it. One downside: I end up cleaning couscous from every fold of his outfit, every crevice of his high chair, the floor, and the entire kitchen. For some reason, the stuff seems to scatter. But, I'm learning: no sense cleaning up too quickly after the meal. Like rice, couscous easily wipes up/vacuums up when it's dry.

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I have the phone number of the nearby Caribbean restaurant programmed in my blackberry. Sometimes when I take Dex to the playground after school, I order before leaving the playground (vegetarian roti -- please pack the roti separately), take the long way home and pick it up. It's actually quite funny, because I just roll by with the stroller or red wagon, wave to the waitress and she comes out to the curb with my take-out order. I hand her the money, she runs back to get me change, she ooohs and aaahs over how cute Dex is, and we're off. You can say it's our local roll-by restaurant. And yes, Dex loves the veggie curry and roti.

It's my potty and I'll cry if I want to

Our otherwise excellent potty-training adventure had a minor setback in February when we went to Nova Scotia. During the 18-hour train ride, Dex asked to use the potty a couple of times, but we discouraged him. (By way of defense: ever been on one of those trains? It's pretty tight in there and even if we did manage to fit a parent and two-year old, I didn't think it would be safe to hold a toddler hovering over that gaping hole of a toilet seat while the train was moving.) Unfortunately, after that trip, we noticed that he stopped asking to go.

Now, more than a month after that incident, he is finally getting it again. He's been going consistently in the morning and at night. And for two nights in a row, we had a number 2 special. Yay!

I can't wait for warmer weather when we get into heavy duty training -- less clothes and more time outdoors in case of "accidents."

This morning, apparently, Dex told his dad that he doesn't want to wear diapers anymore and he just wants to wear his underwear. This is going to be an interesting summer.

Outdoor snack

We had our first barbecue and potato salad night last night so summer is now official for us! The temperature hit the 20s so we took advantage of the heat and sunshine. Here's Dex having a muffin snack on our back porch yesterday afternoon.

"It's popping"

There was a fine drizzle of rain falling when we woke up this morning. Dex looked out the patio doors and said "it's popping." I looked and I knew exactly what he meant. The rain was so fine we couldn't see it falling, but we could see the effects of rain -- the pools of water "popped" every time a drop of rain hit it. Where would we be without little children to help us see the world more clearly?

More juice

I was wondering why he was off his milk in the morning. Usually, he would drinks big gulps of milk during breakfast but for the last few days, he'll have a tentative sip then ask for juice.

"Apple and grape juice, please," he'd say.

I didn't really think much of this until this morning when we said something about "nice colour" and then I realized. Ah, yes, he likes the juice because he likes the colour especially after the egg-colouring event!

I guess that also explains the appeal of Kool-Aid.

Colour theory

Perhaps inspired by our egg-colouring activity over the weekend, Dex has been into playing with coloured water big time. This morning at the breakfast table, he put in a request for "another glass" and when that was delivered was followed by a request for "another glass - the big one."

So in front of him this morning was his little juice glass, plus a little bigger regular sized glass and another short, wide mouth glass. All he wanted to do was practice pouring his juice from one different-sized vessel to the other. I convinced him to drink his juice instead of playing with it but on the promise of replacing the fluid -- some splashing was happening and I dreaded the clean up. Instead I filled one glass with water and when the protest started, I brought out the food colouring and put in a couple of drops of yellow. That got his attention.

"I want green," he said. So we talked about what would turn yellow to green and we decided we should add some blue. A drop of blue into the yellow and he was thrilled with the result! He started drinking green water and began his fluid transfer from one vessel to the other. That was our art and science activity this morning.

I hope food colouring is really not that harmful because I have a feeling drinking coloured water is going to be part of our regular ritual from now on.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! We hope everyone is happy and healthy this holiday weekend.

Here's some pictures of Dex colouring eggs last Friday. For comparison, take a look at his photo from last year. Quite a difference a year makes!

This year he is a little more active with the egg colouring. He was able to use a spoon to dip the eggs in the coloured water and he was more interested in experimenting with the coloured water rather than the eggs. "Look Daddy, I'm changing colours. Adding red to yellow!"

But one thing did not change: our success with keeping the eggs intact after this activity was the same. None of the eggs survived crack free. Pictured below is this year's batch. I had to cook and colour some more eggs later that night so we have eggs for our Easter egg hunt the day after. Dex was very excited that the Easter bunny came to visit us this year.

Knock knock

Knock knock
Who's there?
Lettuce
Lettuce who?
Lettuce in! We're hungry.

That's Dexter's first knock knock joke courtesy of Chirp magazine. He's been telling this joke to everyone for the last few weeks now and he knows it's a big hit with the adults. The adults are also very forgiving of the delivery, because sometimes, Dex forgets the "lettuce" part and he goes straight for the punch line. But that's okay. That just seems to add to the hilarity. Then this afternoon he came up with this:

Dex: Knock knock
Daddy: Who's there?
Dex: Apple
Daddy: Apple who?
Dex: Apple in! We're hungy!

It was too funny. I guess we learnt three things from this:
- Comedians are made, not born.
- Kids at age 2 do not understand homonyms.
- Kids at age 2 understand the anatomy of a joke.

Two years old - part 2

Developmental milestones

We are most certainly in the "No" phase. He says no, even when he means yes. But, it's a one way deal. He loves saying it, but he hates hearing it. "Go to the park," he'd say, and we'll point to the teeming rain and say, "No, honey, there's a torrential rainstorm outside." Saying "no" just makes him go ballistic sometimes. We are learning to say "later" or "after the flood, thunder and lighting has subsided, maybe."

Self-sufficiency. He is pretty good at removing his hat, coat and shoes (thank goodness for velcro!), but we still need to work on putting it on. At night, as long as we hook his pajama top over his head, he can usually loop his hands through the sleeves.

Fork, please. He now wants to eat with a fork and knife like everyone else. We still insist he use the spoon for scooping stuff but he loves having the fork and butter knife. He wants to butter his own toast now, too. And, he is also pretty good at using chopsticks (the training kind, see photo).

Knock. Knock. He is turning out to be quite the kidder. Now that he knows his books backwards and forwards, he's starting to improvise. He is purposely filling in words with either nonsense, or words that are hilariously out of context (...and on his farm, there was a backhoe ee ii, ee ii ohhh). He also told his first knock, knock joke a couple of weeks ago.

Vocabulary is pretty darn good. "Good language skills, especially for a boy" said the woman at the park. I think he certainly meets the 200+ word vocabulary milestone. He can say "hydraulic" and "articulated" and he even knows what they mean (his obsession with machines continues!).

He is singing! He spontaneously bursts into song and we can actually recognize the melody. His favourites: Old MacDonald, Down by the Station, and the day's current favourite: "There was a farmer who had a dog and Bingo was his name-O. B I N G O...."

Shapes, colours, letters. He's got the basics down pat. Last night, he sang the alphabet song and sometimes he recognizes letters when we point them out. He still can't read, but it's freaky because he's memorized a lot of things and it appears as if he's reading them. He knows his basic shapes and colours, too.

Discovered DVDs! When we took the train to Nova Scotia mid-February, we brought along a portable DVD player. He now understands how DVDs work and a version of the Mighty Machines is always in the DVD player downstairs at all times.

First imaginary friend. He woke up one morning last week and told his dad that he has a dog. His name is Emma (apparently, he is not constrained by conventional naming rules) and he is green and white (but sometimes, he is black and white). He is this small (thumb and forefinger held 5 cm apart) and he loves to cook. Dex walks him everyday. Some days, Emma disappears because he goes to the market to buy sausages.

Finally, things are changing so fast. It's getting tougher and tougher to keep up with the changes!

(Part 1 of this post is on physical changes.)