Paper Placemats

There hasn't been much to post this last week since I've been cleaning the apartment. My parents were supposed to come this weekend to see us and the boy (ok, really just the boy), but the snow that cancelled baseball games last week is cancelling travel plans all over the northeast. Suffice it to say that cleaning up cat fur off the carpet doesn't make for very exciting blog posts, but if that kind of thing interests you, try one of these which work wonders on carpets!

Except for my inability to hit high notes and still sounding like a lifetime smoker, everyone in the household is healthy again and the boy is back to his old tricks. I was warned long ago that the real trouble starts when toddlers start exploring in the third dimension: furniture. We've created a reasonably effective buffer so he can't get into too much trouble, but I feel like I'm guarding a POW camp where the prisoners are always working on methods of escape. Today I went upstairs to visit the little daddy's room and when I returned I found him sitting in a chair "reading" an issue of Consumer Reports with a very suspicious look on his face. It gave me the image of someone quickly trying to look casual after doing something in secret. But he's not that smart yet...right?

I've always tried to keep a balance between teaching the boy new things and remembering to just play with him and have fun. However, he needs very little prodding from either myself or my wife since he loves books and will sit for extended periods pointing at the pages and talking a blue streak in his own little toddler-speak. He seems to be very fond of vowels, especially A, E, and O, sometimes I, but is not real fond of U and Y is something we just don't talk about. ;)Every time I take him outside our apartment he notices the letters on each door as we go down the stairs and says them out loud as we go. It's basically teaching him the alphabet song except in reverse since we live on the top floor.

So, fortunately I have another week before my parents show up and hopefully we can pawn the boy off on them at least one night so my wife and I can go somewhere without kids menus or paper placemats. Actually, I wouldn't mind having the placemats since it gives you something to do before your food comes, you can draw inside the lines for a change, and it helps you to remember that you don't have to clean up the table yourself. For non-parents, that might not sound like much of an evening, but it really is the little things, trust me.