Halloween parade

Today was the Halloween Parade at Ben's daycare.

Ben went as a puppy, it was unbelievably cute, he hated every minute of it.

Trip to the mall

Ben is now grown up enough to sit up in a chair and eat grown up food when we go to the mall.



Given the snow this weekend, the mall was the only warm place for him to run around.

Daredevil son

He enjoys going up and down the steps by the mouth of this slide, but (until 23rd October, 2011, momentous date for history) hadn't shown much interest in going down it. Suddenly he stopped, turned around and gave me a sweet grin, and launched himself headfirst down the tube. Happily there is some serious tum-drag which slowed him down enough for me to get to the bottom in time to catch him. This photo was taken on the nth repeat of the slide, where n = until I got tired of it and dragged him home so I could have some coffee.

At the park

Weekend mornings, we take it in turns to take Ben and Polly out for a bit of a run around, while the other one gets to sleep late (sometimes up to 8.30am!). Much as I love my duvet mornings, there is something equally wonderful about getting togged up nice and snug and roaming around the parks as the sun comes up, watching Ben interact with the world.

One noise, two signs OR: The Dog and Duck

Ben does the 'flat-palm-on-the-chest' sign for dog (it should be 'flat-palm-on-the-thigh,' which if you consider it makes quite a lot of sense for 'dog') and he does the 'tips-of-fingers-touch-thumb' or 'quack' motion for a ducks and geese. I was vaguely saying "oh that's right dear, there are some birds" when filming him because I thought he'd just seem some songbirds. There was actually a skein of geese flying overhead, and so his sign was more accurate than I gave him credit for.

He signs for 'dog' when he hears Polly sneeze in another room, he signs 'duck' for rubber duck, mallard in stream, goose... it's amazing watching him thinking out loud with his signs. He only makes the one noise for both, though, "DA!" - which could be the noise for 'look at that interesting animal!'' for all I know. It gets said with increasing emphasis until you agree with him, I know that much.

Some of our favourite things

Ben isn't talking yet, but he's making some extremely expressive noises. There's a noise for placing a storybook decisively in your lap for IMMEDIATE reading, thank youverymuch, and there's a noise for "I'm so clever did you see what I just did?" and there's also a noise for "well, this is very satisfactory and not a little exciting!" - which is the noise at the end of this little clip. It was taken in the park nearest to our house (playing fields and some swings and slides) two weekends ago. You can tell it's not today cos it's not under 3 inches of snow.