All hands on Deck!

Well, with Facebook to upload photos in an instant, and a growing public blog to express all my *thoughts*, this poor little space has been sadly neglected.

But not today.

Today, I'm returning to this little place I first called home to write a quick update on our youngest child: an adventurer, a snuggle-bug, a 22 month old bundle of love and feistiness. I need to try and capture this moment in words because he's growing BY-THE-MINUTE. Every week is different. So I want to try and bottle this cuteness in a blog post.

Most everyone who gets to spend time with Declan asks us "is he always this mellow?", and our answer is an easy and honest - Yes. Unless you take the iPad away from him, in which case he will throw his body down and bash his forehead against the floor a few times in protest. But occasional wilfulness aside, he is as amiable a little fellow as one could dream for.

He loves to snuggle, he sleeps well, he pulls funny faces to make people laugh. His "blue steel" furrowed brow can stop you in your tracks, and just as soon as he realizes he's caught your eye he will relax into a mischievous grin once again. He is a copy cat - wanting to read like his big brother and sister, pushing trucks around with Callum, snuggling with Tegwyn's bear when she isn't looking.

He has a small repertoire of toddler-words, which are barely distinguishable to us and complete babble to others, but he uses them with gusto. What he lacks in vocab and enunciation, he more than makes up for in gesturing and volume. Here are some of his favorites:
shtez - stairs
uppah - apple
ahnj - orange
toe-toe - toast
guck - garback truck
upikuh - hamburger
my! - mine
neow - no (rhymes with meow)
gug - dog
ep - airplane
hep - helicoptor
geg geg - Teg
geck geck - himself (deck deck)
umm - ipad/tablet
id - read
buk - book
boh - ball
muk - milk
buh - bath (usually accompanied with excited shrieking)
wheesh - fish
wah-two - water
two - any number (all numbers are two)
boo - any color (all colours are blue)
O-fil - oval
beaut - boot
guck - sock (not to be confused with the guck that is a garbage truck)
ka-ka-ka-ka - car
em - amen
why-t - white (and by that, he means Daddy's car. For Daddy's car is white, and so all cars that are white, ergo, must contain Daddy. Driving around town we hear a lot of plaintive "white" calls, as vehicle after vehicle drive by and fail to produce Daddy)

And he can point out "o"'s and "b"'s on a page. And that, friends, is about the sum total of his words - but he manages to find fish, balls, hamburgers, ovals and trucks in more places than you could imagine.

He is our fearless one: he can hit a ball of a T with a bat with astounding accuracy. He can jump. he will climb most anything. He regards the bathroom step stool (designed for hand washing) as his own personal height-extender, and totes it around the house so that light switches, snacks, treats, and cellphones are within easy reach. Emergency rescues from the top of the toilet cistern have happened more than once.

The boy has chutzpah. Last week we got Callum a scooter. Within 30 seconds of opening it up, Declan had his heart set on this scooter. He applied the wail reserved for iPad-deprivation to his cause. Usually Jeremy and I have a "no, this is not for you, you will have to wait" policy to those kinds of tantrums - but in an exceptional moment of mushy capitulation we decided to throw money at the problem rather than try and reason it away.

We returned to Target the next morning and bought him his very own Radio Flyer scooter: perfect for ages 2-5. We brought it home. The boy reacted with his appliance-removal wail once again, for the scooter he wanted was Callum's one. Not the red baby one. He wouldn't even stand on it. I packaged the rejected toddler scooter up and returned to Target for the 3rd time in 18 hours. We bought him the one for ages 5+, just like his big brother.

He's been plain sailing since. Come rain, come shine, come mud puddles.

The boy is on a roll :-)