Tommy invades the Summer Kingdom

The weather has certainly turned around here in Ottawa. Two weeks ago we were wading through several feet of snow, and today our front lawn is completely snow-free and it was twenty degrees Celsius. Tommy decided to take advantage of the weather by storming the neighbourhood park.

Here you can see Tommy surveying his new swing set, making sure that it's solid and stable and can be trusted to bear the weight of his minions (once he recruits them).


Next, Tommy makes sure that the sand in his new kingdom is up to snuff. Can't have substandard sand! That would be shameful!


Here's Tommy getting a ride from his mom, after performing an extra-thorough check on sand quality... by eating some of it. Actually, rather a lot. Apparently he wanted to be really, really sure that the sand was good.


Finally, his hard work complete, Tommy decides to allow us to place him in a swing and push him. As you can clearly see, the experience was horrible for him. He certainly didn't enjoy it in any way. The delighted shrieking and hysterical laughter were purely to make us feel better.

(For some added fun... Take a close look at the last picture. Notice the halo behind Tommy's head? It may look like lens flare from the glare off his head, but I assure you, that's a halo.)

Fun in the sun

With a stronger sun and warmer temperature, the kids at playcare have been outside having fun.

Tommy, helpful as always, has decided to try to do some shovelling. Perhaps a smaller shover would help.


Driving is also fun. He can't wait to get behind the wheel of a larger vehicle...


Note the wonderful yellow rain boots sticking out from under his wind pants. Oh the joys of being a kid. When did you last get such joy at putting on your yellow rain boots?

Tommy has a hat

Andrea picked out a hat for Tommy the other day, and every time he notices it he immediately gets intensely excited and demands to be allowed to put it on his head.

Seriously. I'm not joking. He gets really, really excited and yanks the hat away from whoever's holding it and puts it on his head. He only takes it off long enough to jam it on someone else's head and laugh at them, then he grabs it back and puts it on again.

Normally I try to write something funny to go with these pictures, but this time, I thought: "What's funnier than a 16-month-old boy going this nuts over a hat?" And then I answered myself: "Nothing. Except possibly if the hat had fruit on it." (The hat doesn't have fruit on it.)

Tommy finds the snow intimidating

Up until now, Tommy's been delighted with every opportunity to play outside, gleefully jamming his little plastic beach shovels into the snowbanks and withdrawing them once again. He seems intensely satisfied when he has the chance to do this; from the look on his face, he seems to feel that he has personally accomplished something extraordinary by spearing the snowbank. Exactly what it is that he thinks he's accomplishing, I'm not entirely sure, but the fact remains that whatever he thinks he's doing, he finds it deeply satisfying.

After the 52 centimetres of snow on the weekend, he seems a little more nervous about the snow. In fact, after being brought outside, he spent almost every minute of his time out there trying to convince Andrea or I to bring him in. He was so worried about the snow that he actually refused to walk along the path, even if it meant getting closer to the front door (and thus safety). So after being plopped partway down the path, he was forced to simply stand there and wait until I picked him up and carried him back in the house.



Of course, when you look at the situation from Tommy's point of view, I suppose it's more understandable... I'd be pretty worried if this was how I saw the front walkway...

With food like this, who wouldn't be happy?

We gave Tommy some delicious pasta for supper tonight. As you can see, he enjoyed it... perhaps a little too much. We're still trying to convince him that the best way to eat food is to put it in his mouth, and that smearing it across his forehead is in fact not helpful. Progress on this front is slow.


Once he'd gotten cleaned up a bit, Tommy was delighted with the whole experience. Or perhaps the grin is because the couch and ottoman had just been cleaned and Tommy's relishing the anticipation of smearing drool, formula, food, and other yuckiness across our furniture again. Either way, he appears to be happy, and isn't that the important thing?

Gravity is so overrated

In case anyone's wondering, the reason we haven't been uploading pictures isn't because Tommy's not doing anything cute or fun... The problem is that he really likes the camera and wants to show his appreciation of it by eating it. Which means that the minute we pull the camera out to chronicle whatever cute and/or funny thing he's doing, he stops doing it and rushes the camera. Here's an excellent demonstration of the problem.



Tommy is shown here learning to defy gravity. All it takes is determination, iron will, and a handy daddy to hold you upside down.


As you can see, Thomas is quite smug about his accomplishment.



And here we see Tommy doing his best tough guy pose. I certainly wouldn't want to run into him in a dark alley!

Tommy is a dolphin

Thomas is learning how to talk, and he's actually making excellent progress. He's able to hold quite lengthy conversations on a surprising variety of topics. Unfortunately, he's only learned how to speak Dolphin; his English language skills are a little lagging. He also demonstrates his progress in learning Fartinese.