Wednesday, January 21, 2009

And now, a special offer (idea borrowed from Deb):
The first five people to respond to this post with a posted comment about this offer will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
  • I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
  • What I create will be just for you.
  • It'll be done this calendar year.
  • You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure! However, I do promise that it will be more than just a handmade card!
  • I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
  • I have to know you — no stranger blog-stalkers allowed.
  • No, the baby I'm currently "making" is not up for grabs. Sicko.
THE CATCH: you HAVE TO put this in your blog/online journal/Facebook as well. We can all make stuff!




Lately we've been working on curbing Caspian's auto-toddler response of "Nonononono!" when we start to do something he doesn't like. We ask him to "use other words to tell us what he wants" instead. Praise God, it's been working well! Now, 3 times out of 4, he'll just tell us "Please don't pick me up" or "I want to do it myself" instead of "Nonononono!"





We're going through our board games to try to weed out the ones we don't like much. One of the games we "test-played" recently is called Lie Detector, which has a cool non-electronic "polygraph" that tells whether a clue-giver's clue is true or false. Each clue-giver's card has their picture on it, and they're labeled by occupation. Caspian is entranced by this game (it's got cards with different people, a polygraph that makes noise, a "pen" that pokes in holes, and a peg board for keeping score). He was testing different cards in the polygraph and asking me what they were. Some of the occupations were unfamiliar to him, as evidenced by this exchange:
"Mommy, what's that?" (holds up card)
(reading card aloud) a psychic reader
"What means psychic reader, mommy?" :)





Speaking of asking questions, Caspian totally cracks us up with his inflections. He's realized that we tend to raise our speaking pitch at the end of a question and tries to emulate it now. Sometimes he'll start out in a normal tone of voice and then speak the last word in falsetto while he raises his eyebrows, and other times he'll speak most of the question in his question voice. Something like, "Daddy, want some cookies TOO?" I have got to get it on video, as description hardly does him justice.





We got to play in the leftover snow this morning — I've already taken 267 photos today! The playground next door looked like a winter wonderland, but the camera batteries died before we discovered the kitty footprints. Caspian took this opportunity to use his garden fork for the first time, to dig through the snow and debris. He doesn't have any snow gear, per se, so I put a pair of my earmarked-for-puppets socks over his shoes and pant legs. It worked really well! After we came in, we had cocoa...although his was more milk than cocoa, which makes me think using a couple drops of Hershey's wouldn't be a bad way to get him to drink more milk... There were so many "must-see" photos that I created a Multiply album instead of trying to upload them here. Here's a teaser for you!

2 comments:

Kate said...

I'm in. I am a little scared about what you might make for me, but I'll chance it! Now, the suspense is killing me. Give me a day or two to post on my blog/Facebook. Later, dude.

Messie-Bessie said...

I loved the snow pictures you posted on Multiply! You're really on top of this whole motherhood thing. I wish people could see the way you reason with Caspian when he has made a "bad choice" or used his "outside voice", etc. He really, really understands you . . . I can practically see the little wheels turning in his brain! I love the thoughts and comments he expresses to me here at home too! This is SO fun!