Little Milestones

One of the great things about hanging out with a toddler are the humorous and creative word pronunciations that change as language develops. Grateful for his progress, it is still bittersweet when the fun word is suddenly replaced by the accurate pronunciation. This past week we mourned the passing of 'acarium' and 'Keg' (Joe's boss Craig). The very hardest one to say goodbye to thus far though has been 'yowie' (yellow)... : (

Our thanks to craigslist. We sold a crib to a Seattle couple expecting twins. Oliver is celebrating his new bed today.

Quick trip to Monterey last week with Joe who was attending the EcoFarm Conference. Barefoot in the sand and wading in the tide pools, one sunset, weather not great. Squeezed in two trips to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a truly wonderful place. An entire new wing called the Splash Zone was added since our visit last year. Tons of interactive exhibits, more touch pools, and penguins!

Found some more fun at the new Monterey County Youth Museum. Grinning kiddos running around exploring a treehouse, a farmers market with a John Deere tractor and garden, a place for the kids to stomp in a barrel of faux grapes (not as gross as it sounds), an ambulance and hospital, a theatre with stage, costumes, camera, and screen, a miniature golf course with cart, a 2-story playhouse, a 'construction' site, an ocean area with a boat and soft piers for climbing, and this great contraption they could stand in and use a pulley system to lift a hoop and surround themselves with a gigantic soap bubble. Whoa! 

Despite all of this fun kidstuff, I still think the biggest travel highlights for Oliver are the airports. He's totally into airport security. The conveyer belts, the x-ray machines, escalators, moving sidewalks, the baggage claim, and the jets. We had to pull up the Bombardier website so he could learn more about the Q400 we took to and from Bellingham and he hasn't stopped talking about it, tells everyone. 

Joe took some great pics, so we'll just have to wait patiently until he gets a chance to do his magic and give them to me to post.

A GREAT DAY...

Wow...Barack Hussein Obama. How intelligent. How poised. How right. Courageous to assume this role of leading us forward. What a great day to be an American...

We don't do the cable tv thing and I was unsuccessful accessing any of the live feeds online. As luck would have it, the Mount Baker Theatre opened its doors at 8am this morning to view the inauguration on the big screen. O's awesome caregiver Laura, Oliver, myself shared this amazing moment with a packed house of rapt Bellingham folk. He clapped and cheered and somehow managed to watch the entire presentation. I hope he will always remember it.

Cheers to hope!    

It's not the cake, it's the candles...

So here is an image from the last of Oliver's three birthday celebrations taken by Joe in late July at a cabin on San Juan Island we shared with Oliver's Aunt Jekka and Uncle Alex.

Lummi Island Summer '08

Potty Beans

On a recent trip to my hairdresser Mandy, known around our house as The Great Mandini (a reference to both her skills with the shears as well as a little toddler marketing-ese to get him into the chair), I inquired as to how her daughter was acclimating to her new preschool. She informed me that it was going quite well, in fact, that the preschool was potty training Freda for them. Really. Of course (as we had yet to begin this little milestone despite our recent visits to open houses at the various recommended preschool options and their age and potty-trained-only requirements) I asked how they were accomplishing this feat. 'Potty beans', she beamed. Potty beans? Pink Jelly Belly's (Freda's fave) to be specific. So off I trot to Traders to obtain some of these 'magic' beans. To say that this has caught on like YouTube would be an understatement. In fact, Oliver is so enthusiastic about using his little potty for one of those brightly colored sweet rewards that Joe and I are concerned that he is going to damage his bladder trying to produce! So I started telling him the flavors to make things ever more interesting, adding another layer to the drama, thinking he could care less. Well...this morning, after a particularly earnest session in the loo, I handed him his jelly bean. He looked at it quite seriously, said 'mmmm...toasted marshmallow' and popped it into his mouth, huge grin. He doesn't even know what a toasted marshmallow (let alone a marshmallow) is! Last night I asked him which flavor he most liked. Reply? 'All of them.' Needless to say, no photo to accompany this entry... 

Post Holiday Post

So here is a mug of 'Decorating Man' as in solstice tree decorating man, as in everything right now ends in -man. Baker Man, Worker Man, Wood Man (when he is helping dad haul in wood for the fire). His own naming convention. I'll attempt to post some video of the tree decorating soon. Should add that one of the biggest challenges I have as a parent is letting go of The Control Thing. When I occasionally succeed, the results are almost always surprising (to me) and wonderful (to everyone else). The tree decorating a case in point. There is mom, trying to evenly space the colors and ornaments, make sure no bare spots exist, similar items separated (there are careers for sick people like me)...but Oliver had ideas of his own. Dad employed some tape and festive holiday ribbon and tied me kicking and screaming to a nearby chair (kidding) to get me out of Oliver's way and the magic began...the carrot and strawberry ornaments were all hung side by side, logically, with the sun ornament, 'so they could be together in the garden and ripen in the sun,' all of the cactus ornaments were grouped together with the coyote, and after years of painful segregation, the snowmen were finally allowed to commingle... 

Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow!

We were thrilled to have an epic amount of snow in December. It was sunny and beautiful, reminded me of Colorado or Montana, definitely not Bellingham. The region was paralyzed. We ordered sleds from Bean. As Oliver has been obsessed with the BBC Planet Earth series, he spent an inordinate amount of time pretending he was a polar bear (or maybe he was the camel from the Gobi Desert) crawling around the massive drifts in the yard eating snow. I have never seen anyone eat so much snow...

No Chronology Whatsoever

I am just going to post on the fly, no chronology for a bit. Still feeling my way around this medium. Here is O. on his 2nd Birthday in June '08 taking a tour of a giguminous (our word) cedar log in Stanley Park, Vancouver B.C. Purpose of the trip was a visit to see the new baby beluga whale at the Vancouver Aquarium, which we found to be insanely overcrowded and disgustingly dirty. The pre-aquarium picnic in the park was a major hit though. 

Happy New Year!

Hello and Happy New Year All! 

This blog was built for us by Oliver's wonderful 'Aunt' Jessica and we are forever grateful to her for it. All posts prior to 2009 were taken from email correspondence between Jessica and myself and cleverly edited (thank you Jess) by her. 

Admittedly, I have approached the baby blogosphere with some trepidation as there is something a little terrifying about putting my sweet little person out in the digital world, but maybe I am just being an overprotective dinosaur as I so frequently read the blogs of others.

Oh, and Otter is Oliver's first attempt at pronouncing his name as well as one of his favorite animals at the various aquariums we've frequented, hence the title of the blog. If you ask him now, he will tell you he is Ollider Bennett.