The Boo is a boy set in his ways. Sometimes he doesn’t deal well with change, and in fact completely defies its existence.

For example, summer has most definitely arrived in these parts. We’ve already had several days in the mid-80s. It’s sunny. We’re getting tanned already. And yet, the boy refuses to not wear his grey fleece coat. He loves his grey fleece coat, it’s part of the ritual of getting out the door (”Time for shoes and coat!”), and even though it’s 85 out, he still puts it on. And wears it. And won’t take it off! Even if Mommy and Daddy are both going out in t-shirts. Even if we him if he’s hot (the answer is invariable nope!). He wears his coat every single day.

At least he likes his coat, I suppose. Better than refusing to wear a coat in the winter, right?

The Boo has a sandbox with lots of space to play with trucks and sand toys, and just today he figured out sand towers! Previously I’ve had to do them for him, repeatedly, while he destroyed them with his trucks. Today though, he did the whole process himself.

First fill the cup with sand. Pat down the sand. Stuff in more sand. Pat some more. Turn cup upside down. Pat cup. Carefully and slowly lift cup up. Tada! Tower made.

I’m ridiculously proud of this for some reason! I think it’s the first time I’ve really noticed the Boo putting together a string of events that I’ve shown him (usually he resists being “taught”) and doing something spontaneously on his own that requires a fair bit of dexterity and manipulation. In the past few weeks the boy has seemed so very grown up all of a sudden!

I always have trouble answering the question “Is he speaking in sentences yet?” This is because the Boo has been putting words together for a very long time. The problem is, until recently, we had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I suppose they were sentences — what else could they have been?

Now though, he’s leaped forwards in terms of speaking ability so that, should he feel the urge, we can actually have a conversation. It’s novel. He also sometimes (again depending on mood) gives a running commentary. This is particularly evident in the car where he sees a lot of things he likes. It can go something like this:

Cranky! There’s a Cranky! Blue car. Like blue car. TRUCK! Behind truck. Bye bye truck! BUS! Hi bus. Bye bye bus. Green car! Cranky! (There are a lot of cranes in our town, and to the Boo, they are all Cranky the Crane from Thomas Trains.)

When he really likes something he’ll go on and on about it. One time he talked about a blue volvo we saw near our house for a solid 20 minutes on the way to a friend’s house. He also likes the green volvo that is often parked near our house. These are old volvos, the “cool” volvos. The kid has taste

He also frequently says “byebye guinea pig”, talking about the guinea pig we saw at a friend’s house last Saturday. That’s 6 days ago! I think I see a guinea pig or hamster or bunny rabbit in our future.

The point is, the Boo is quite the talker these days. He’ll even pull out books and start asking what things are. He’s very descriptive, he’ll talk about color and size and what whatever it is can do. He’s very inquisitve and it takes approximately half an hour to get from our front door into our car because we must stop and look at ever spiderweb on the way there, and the all the rocks in the actual parking lot. There are a lot of spiders and rocks out there.

While I do miss some of the baby things the Boo did, this age is just amazing. For the most part he’s fairly cooperative as long as you indulge his curiosities, and he’s so excited about everything he learns and sees that it’s hard not to just follow him around, waiting to see what he notices next. He’s still not all that keen on being “taught”, but he’s very observant. I finally get to witness that “childlike curiosity” people often talk about. It’s a wonderful thing to see.

As I was working on my purple sweater, Boo wanted to try on the sleeve. So he did. I told him how I was making a purple sweater for me, just like I made a yellow sweater for him. I asked if he thought we should make a sweater for Daddy, and he said Yes! I asked what color he thought it should be, and he said Green!

We went on to decide colors for sweaters for other family members. Orange for Grandma and Bill, red for Grandpa and Ocky, blue for Erin and Mia, green for Nanny and Granddad.

Right, we’ll just get right on that, shall we? When’s the boy gonna learn to knit?

For quite a while now we’ve been getting movies out on Netflix for the Boo (and us). It’s all trial and error — we’re never entirely sure what he’ll like and what he won’t. It’s also a good way to get some of the older movies that aren’t currently available on DVD.

Lately Boo has been asking to watch the “animals”. The thing is most of his movies involve animals so it’s been hard figuring out which one he’s talking about. Most of them he calls by name (Ice Age, Monsters, Cars, etc.) so what’s this animals movie he’s asking for? Eventually he’d get exasperated with our poor attempts to understand him and gives up.

Just in the past few weeks his vocabulary and speaking ability have really improved, and the other day he asked for the animals movie again. So we went through all of his DVDs with me asking if this was the animal movie. No. None of them were the animal movie. Okay.. I asked him which animals it had in it.

He answered me very matter of factly that it had a lion and a giraffe and a zebra and a hippo and some monkeys. Aaahhhh. That would be Madagascar, something we rented absolutely ages ago! I can’t believe he remembers it! I don’t even remember being all that impressed with it, but apparently he was. Okay then!

So we’ve added it to his wishlist, and you’ve heard it here first. This is not us living vicariously or hoping he’ll like something. He actually is asking for this movie. How cool is that?

We made some zucchini bread this week, and Boo likes cinnamon! He told me so after he stuck his finger in the cinnamon that was carefully measured out for the bread

Side note: those little mixing bowls are really handy for cooking with a toddler. I can get everything ready beforehand!

Anyway, I’ve heard of people smelling spices with their kiddos before, but we hadn’t actually done it. Turns out to be a fun way to spend a few minutes! He loves opening and closing the bottles and smelling all the different scents.

Otherwise we didn’t do a whole lot this week. We went to watch H play footie on Friday which was fun, but the Boo was very distracted by all the other things in the gymnasium so he didn’t watch a lot. They had bouncy castles and driving arcade games, two things he just loves! He’s such a climber and is very good at making “vroom vroom” noises. Next week will be more productive, hopefully.

For Mother’s Day this year, we decided to join our friends Elizabeth and Ziggy for a jaunt out to the Northwest Train Museum in Snoqualmie. They have several train cars and engines you can explore (they are HUGE!) and you can pay for an actual train ride. Mothers were free today so it seemed the ideal time to go!

The train ride is very simple — basically Snoqualmie to North Bend and back, via the Snoqualmie Falls (note to self: go there this summer and play in the water!). But it was fun, many of the cars were in some state of repair, and they’re building a train restoration building so it looks like they’ll get some attention soon. The steam engines on the sidings were of particular interest. Boo really enjoyed himself and didn’t want to leave!

We stopped off for coffee/hot chocolate afterwards and drove home for dinner. It was such a nice day!

This week’s “interesting thing” was swimming! Thursday we spent our playgroup time at the pool in a friend’s condo building downtown. It was a small pool, but very suited to a small group of kids. If only they had a shallow end! It was 4 feet throughout.

Boo was hesitant at first, but one friend brought a blow up whale pool toy, and he couldn’t resist that. So in he went! At first he clung to me and any other floating item he could get his hands on (noodles, balls, those floating circle things). Gradually he loosened up though and by the end he was out of the circles and floating in my arms, kicking and “swimming”. In fact, by the end of our time there he didn’t want to leave! Such a water baby.

We’ll definitely mave to make the trip to the Mounlake Terrace pool soon. I’m also rather tempted to get a floating whale/boat/whatever for the lake this summer. We’ll see!

Today we went to the Science museum because the Grossology exhibit was closing this weekend. It’s a truly great exhibit. I wish I had had more time to actually read all the interesting tidbits they had in there. As it was we were too busy running from exhibit to exhibit. Boo’s favorites were probably the “crawl in the mouth, slide down the esophogus, land in the stomach, crawl, through the intestine, come out the butt onto a pile of brown padding. Hysterical. The vomiting machine, burping machine, and aiming gun at a sneezing nose was also pretty entertaining.

Only complaint is that these machines were hard to work! For a two year old who wants to do it all himself, this was frustrating. He loved it when it worked but wouldn’t let me do it for long. Oh well. The giant surgery game (what’s that called, the one where a buzzer goes off when you touch the sides as you try and take the body parts out with tweezers, or in this case, salad tongs) was my favorite, just for the pure kitch quality.

The science museum here is just awesome in an of itself. There’s a water canon outside, a toddler water play area inside, and a gorgeous butterfly house. There’s an insect zoo, a replica space shuttle (one of the older ones) that Boo can sit in, some dinosaurs, a digger, and a million other things I haven’t gotten the chance to look at because they’re on the boring side for a lil one. Great place. Highly recommend it!