Sign of Things to Come

Today Darcy was invited to go to her friend's house to go swimming. Sam has a pool at her house and her Dad had invited Nick to bring Darcy over one day for a swimming play date. He likes to have a parent stay around when their child is swimming, for safety's sake, so Nick was prepared to go swimming too. A great sacrifice on his part!

This morning they were getting things ready to go, swimsuits, towels, sunblock, all the normal things you need for a pool party. Wesley saw all these preparations and noticed that nothing was being prepared for him. He has this way of yelling at you so that even though he's not saying any words, his thoughts come clearly across. He made it very clear that he felt he should be included in the pool party. At one point he looked inside the backpack and saw Nick's bathing suit inside. He pulled it out and held it up in my face and started yelling. He was clearly saying, "See! I knew there was something fun going on! Where's my swimsuit????" To add insult to injury, they rode Nick's bike with the child seat on it over to Sam's house. Wesley's two favourite activities right now are swimming and bike riding. Nothing like rubbing salt in the wound. As he looked out the window and saw them riding away, he freaked out. He's had mini temper tantrums before, but nothing like this. There was crying, screaming, yelling, kicking, hitting, the whole package. I felt bad for the poor little guy so I let him have it out, tried to give him some hugs and then got him some grapes (his favourite snack) to settle him down. I think that as we approach his second birthday next month we're going to see more and more outbursts like this. He got over it pretty quickly but it was quite intense while it lasted. I'm not looking forward to that being a regular occurrence!

After he settled down, we went to the grocery store (where he got a free cookie) and then we came home and played in the backyard. Then we went for a bike ride around the block. It took more than half an hour to go around our tiny block with Wesley on his tricycle. He stopped every few minutes when something caught his attention. A big transport truck went down our street (they're not supposed to do that) and that fascinated him. A pretty blond lady got into her car and that fascinated him too. Then he had to get off the bike to throw a stone in a puddle. Normal 2-year old things. He ended up having a great morning, but we sure got off to a rough start.

Wesley's Ears - July Update

Today was our first visit back to the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist since Wesley's surgery in March. Of course, with it being a specialist's appointment, you can't expect things to go perfectly smoothly. We had to wait about an hour past our appointment time before we saw the doctor, but Wesley was great. He played quietly and was really patient.

After waiting for an hour we had about 3 minutes with the doctor and a resident. They both looked in Wesley's ears and told us that everything looks great. That's pretty much what I expected to hear, so we're all good. The doctor said he wanted to hear Wesley talking his ear off the next time we see him. Wesley is already getting the beginnings of a lot of words (including one for chocolate 0 that's my boy!) so I think we're getting back on track speech-wise. I'm sure that we soon won't be able to get him to be quiet.

Our next visit with the specialist is in December. Hopefully everything continues to go well until then.

Summer Fun

Sorry I haven't been updating much but we're not spending much time inside so I'm not at the computer as much as usual. We just love being outside and we're trying to spend every minute we can out there. Wesley is having a nap right now and it's super hot outside so Darcy and I are taking a break so I thought I'd sneak in a quick update.

Of course, there's not a lot to update. We play outside and we laugh a lot. That's about it right now.

Wesley is definitely developing into an interesting character. He loves to play jokes on people, his favourite being to throw a bucket of water on someone. He loves it just as much when you throw the bucket of water back on him. Darcy is really into telling jokes, but most of them don't make any sense. She thinks she can ask you any question and then say, "Gotcha!" and that's a joke. For example, we were in the car this morning and she said, "Mommy would you be able to drive the car without any buttons on it?" I said no and she said, "Gotcha!" and laughed like a maniac. I didn't get it. Her favourite joke is from a TV show. She tells you that you have to ask her if she's a truck. When you do she shouts, "NO!" and then laughs like crazy. That one's a bit funnier.

Our favourite project of the summer has been our vegetable garden. We've been working on this since May and now we're finally starting to enjoy the fruits (or should I say vegetables) of our labour. We've had several servings of beautiful green beans already with a few more to come. Over the next couple of weeks I'm hoping to get rid of our first group of bean plants and then grow a second batch for later in the summer into early fall. Our carrots seem to be coming along nicely, as far as we can tell from the greens. Our big surprise though has been the zucchini. I will admit that I didn't do enough research before planting zucchini. It's way too big a plant for the tiny garden we have. It's taking over! And from the look of things, we're going to have a lot of zucchini when they're all full-grown. We might be taking orders! We've got a few that are starting to show now and lots of blossoms still coming up every day. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

As for flowers, we've got some cosmos planted in the backyard along with our annual attempts at sunflowers. I think we're going to have four, maybe five great sunflowers this year. They're coming along very well. Papa planted some hostas (with purple flowers, for Darcy) in the front yard when he was visiting and those seem to have established themselves well in the front yard. Darcy has loved being a part of the gardening, especially picking the green beans. They both love to do the watering with me, but Wesley just wants to get himself wet. It's been a great family project and I'm already beginning to think about what we're going to grow next year.