After a brief taste of spring, we dipped back into some chilly, wet weather over the last week, including snow on Saturday. Not too much though, and luckily, at this time of year, it doesn't linger. I think it's not truly spring until you've seen snow on the crocuses!

(Note: Edward's shiner came when his momentum carried him into the couch after flopping backward on this floor rocker, which put a damper on a favorite game.)

To combat the cabin fever, I pulled out a few items that had been spirited away amid the Christmas hubbub for just such an occasion. With Christmas and both birthdays in one two-week mid-winter stretch, it can all be a bit overwhelming. I've done this every year and Edward never notices the missing items, but is thrilled with their unexpected reappearance.

Edward now has the "ramp" pieces that go with his Cars (the movie) vehicles. He's had the vehicles out for a few weeks already but John reminded me that there was more to the set. These can be taken apart and put together in several configurations. I think he will quickly learn to manipulate the pieces on his own because asking me for help also draws Daniel's attention and then Daniel absconds with one or more of the pieces. He generally brings them back or drops them within only a few minutes because he truly has no use for them, but it's still very frustrating for Edward.

Daniel got some cars that you can pull back and release to scoot across the floor. He crawls all over pushing and pulling them, only occasionally letting go. Then he chases the car/truck/taxi across the room with gleeful giggles.

Inside or out, Daniel is all about the climbing. He loves the park, but even lacking any playground equipment with stairs to climb, he finds any waist-high surface and works to hoist himself up. Outside in the yard, he climbs up the low retaining wall next to our patio (all part of last fall's basement waterproofing excavation project.) Then he trot through the as-yet-unplanted garden area, steps carefully over the garden edging and runs back down the grass to the patio to start over. I do mean "down"--the project created a gentle slope to direct water away from the house. Daniel is not all that agile with uneven surfaces so often ends up propelling himself faster than his legs can keep up and tumbles down into the grass. No worries though--he just picks himself right up and keeps trotting.

Here's the indoor version of this game:



This video also brings up a curious point about Edward's linguistic tendencies. Namely, where did an Iowa-born kid with two Midwestern parents pick up a southern twang? You can hear him asking "where's my bay-at?" (baseball bat) over and over. He also does this sometimes with "day-ad" (dad) and a few other words. He can say them all normally (note, my definition of "normal" is "the way I say it") but every once in a while he reverts to the twang. He did have a teacher with a pretty strong Southern accent from about 18-months to 2-years, but she has since left the daycare and he hasn't seen her in more than a year. I'm trying to figure out if there's a pattern--like all words with that short 'a' sound or, perhaps, primarily when he's feeling whiny/needy. We'll see.