Blackflies and bruises at The River, May long weekend

It was a big May long weekend up at The River.  We got some great photos (see below).

Greta, Max, and I were arrived Friday morning, a full day before everyone else.  We spent the morning at a mom & tot event at nearby Edge Hill, a small, private Waldorf school just a few kilometers from The River.  It was a nice opportunity to learn about the school (if ever we intend to send our children there) and to meet people.

Shortly thereafter, Hailey got into a porcupine.  We tried pulling out the quills ourselves, but she was having none of it.  We tried alcohol and acetaminophen to no avail.  Out of options, we bit the bullet and took her to a vet.  $250 later we had a very groggy dog with no more quills in her mouth.  Not the best way to spend a Friday up at the River, but all's well that ends well.  Sorry, no pictures of the porcupine, quills, or sedated dog.

Tom and Jean arrived on Saturday, with Sue, Jeff, and Anne hot on their heels.  Everyone stayed until Monday -- a nice long stay up at The River.  Highlights include:

• Gus was the only person to do any significant swimming in the chilly May river water, though Greta and Max joined for a brief spell.
• The blackflies were out in force, as evidenced by the photos of Max below.  By day he gave no outward sign that the bugbites bothered him.  But by night he would grind his face into the mattress or bang his face into the wall to scratch the itch -- all while sleeping!
• Max took a couple nasty spills, as evidenced by the lumps and black-eye in the photos below.
• Max drove the tractor with grampa.  Max loves the tractor.
• Gus and Greta used their new trailer hitch for the first time to bring home the trailer.

But enough of my yakin'.  Enjoy the photos, courtesy of Jean and Sue!  More can be found here.

He's a natural.

How could anyone fall asleep while riding a tractor?! 

Blackfly bites, black eye.  All in a day's work.

This shot is great.

Gramma with baby Anne.

Max investigates his cousin.

Uncle Jeff rarely makes it into this blog.  But this shot was to good to leave out.

Max uses dinner utensils for the first time

This morning Max used a fork to eat food for the first time ever.  He was eating pancakes with blueberries and whipped cream for breakfast.  (The mess was epic.)  He was given a fork with his meal today as an experiment in early childhood development.

Max used his fork as follows.  He picked up a piece of pancake in one hand, set it on top of the fork in his other hand, then immediately picked the piece of pancake off his fork with his hand and fed himself.  The fork served as an intermediate rest stop between his table and mouth.  The whole spectacle was greeted with thunderous applause from both mommy and daddy.

Sadly, we got no pictures of the event.  Perhaps we'll catch it on film sometime in the future.

Max the bear

Max has decided that all cool babies know what the bear says.... in fact, all cool things say what the bear says.  He flips through his books looking for anything that remotely resembles a bear and then loudly proclaims RAWR!!!  Thus, the grizzly bear, the polar bear, the panda bear, the kola bear and the teddy bear all say RAWR!!!

Trivia:  Based on this article, what does Max think the bird says?
(Note: You cannot use his mouth as a clue as he is actually
saying bird in this picture.)

Grandpa Gutoski is largely to blame for all of this.  He started the bear obsession.  Max loved to have him read an animal book and name all the animals.  When he got to the page with the bear grandpa would say "The big bear RAWR!!!" in a gruff voice that Max loved.  Max was so delighted that grandpa proceeded to attach RAWR to every animal in the book ("And the dolphin says...RAWR!).  Now the bunny rawrs, the lizard rawrs and the duck rawrs.  To Max's delight, the dump truck also rawrs and you can kind of make the dog rawr.

Fortunately, I am his mother and thus he has learned a certain amount of respect for the chimpanzee. It says "Whoo whoo whoo ah ah ah".

Disclaimer:  I do not really believe in accuracy getting in the way of a good story, but since this blog to act as a sort of baby book for Max, I feel compelled to report that he also correctly knows the sounds of the fish, sheep, cow, owl (although he thinks owl is representative of all birds) and cat.

Gardening and yard work with Max

Before I begin, please notice and admire the fancy new look of this blog, which features a cute picture of Max taken last fall as its banner.  Here's the original source photo.

Today Greta and I finally got started on our gardening.  Max and the dogs helped us all the while.

Max helped with these lettuce transplants.  Shaky chewed his ball.

Max and mom admiring their handiwork on the transplants.

Max can now do two things at once: climb stairs and play with a trowel.

We decided to abandon an old bed of herbs we established outside our yard on city property.  The bed was getting too overrun with grass.  I transplanted any herbs I could salvage from the defunct bed into another bed inside our yard.  Greta had to point out to me which plants were weeds and which were herbs.

To honour Greta's sister Wendy, I will now provide a Wendy-style list of the stuff we transplanted today:

• oregano
• celantro
• chives
• some other herb who's name I've forgotten
• yet another herb
• rhubarb
• lettuce

Greta transplanting herbs (mostly).  In this picture you can clearly see the rhubarb and chives.

These are our raspberry bushes, now into their second year.  We are VERY excited about the amount of raspberries we expect to pick this summer.  We did absolutely no work on these bushes today -- I only include the picture because I like raspberries.

And finally, I spent some time today chipping away a little more of our retaining walls.  (See image below.)  We've undertaken a very ambitious project to replace our rotting railroad-tie walls with concrete blocks that we obtained for free off craigslist.  We were pleased at getting such great bricks for free.  But the pleasure quickly turned to anxiety when we realized exactly how much work it is to build a retaining wall.  (GULP!)

These rotting railroad ties need to be painstakingly pried up.  For rotting wood, they're extremely stubborn!

"Hot" means ....? (More progress on the word "No")

In an earlier post I detailed our struggle with teaching Max the word "no".  I am pleased to announce that we have made some progress in this regard.  Mostly, we have been attempting to teach Max that the stove is no, because he has developed an interest in hanging from the oven door, which causes it to crash open.  Although this is relatively harmless when the oven is off, it has obvious negative consequences when the oven is on.  I'm all about letting Max learn natural consequences, but these seem a little harsh.

So the oven was no.  We explained to Max that it could be hot and he went on time out if he touched it.  At first this seemed to work very well.  He would run up to the oven and declare "HOT!" and then run off again.  He even generalized the concept to Grandma and Grandpa's oven and to the barbecue.  We were thrilled.   Not only did our son know to leave the oven alone, but he had also mastered a new word!

But our original assessment of Max's understanding may have been misguided.  As you rock him to bed at night he quietly repeats "hot, hot, hot".  When you give him a bite of your ice cream, he informs you that it is "hot".  And when he is happy to see you he dashes across the room with a big grin, open arms, and a barrage of "hots"

Max's understanding of the off limits oven seems to be headed in a similar direction.  Despite our early progress, Gus turned around yesterday to find that Max had not only touched the oven, but he had climbed into the oven drawer!  On second thought, it may not have been an example of exemplary parenting to delay time out while we took some pictures.....