Another chore

He now replaces the toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom (an easy slide on/slide off holder – no squeezing a tube kind).

Pretty soon I won’t have to lift a finger! And then he’ll become a teenager, and he’ll be back to useless.

Child labour

Everyone’s telling me I should let Matthew help out with some of the chores around the house, despite how much longer it will take to get anything done. He’s helped me load up the dishwasher and turn it on before, so it has now been decided by the committee (me) that this will now be his job. He will be responsible for opening the soap dispenser, making sure I don’t spill any as I pour it in, closing the cover of the dispenser, closing the door, and turning on the appropriate wash cycle.

I’ve also tried to teach him to fold laundry (as best as a toddler could possibly do) but to no avail; he just yanks all the clothes out of the basket, throws them on the floor, and dances on top of them with his dirty, stinky feet. Counterproductive I’d say.

He’s not that great at sweeping up the kitchen floor either; he just whips the crumbs across the floor with the broom.

He’s actually pretty good with dusting, until he sees that all the surfaces at his level are done and then he takes the Swiffer duster to his head.

So when will it be OK to teach him to scrub the bathtub and shower? That’s the one job that kills me, so I’d like to pass it off to someone else.

Got the bigscreen TV

Ha ha! I told you all before Chris did! Nanner nanner nanner!

We got the 62″ Toshiba yesterday and it’s sooooo big! We watched a movie last night around 9:30 with all the lights off in the basement, and this thing is so big it was like sitting in a movie theatre. Except that I got to lay down with a blanket there and the popcorn was much cheaper. And the floors weren’t sticky.

We’ve moved the furniture that was in the main floor living room down to the rec room (I’m sure Chris will give me hell for calling it a rec room since he calls it a theater room), and got new furniture to replace it on the main floor. The new furniture upstairs is cool too; it’s very high off the floor so now you don’t sink when you sit down, and the cushions are very thick like big pillows. We still need coffee tables and end tables for both rooms, but we’re satisfied for now.

Matthew’s enjoying the rec room downstairs, except now that we’ve filled it with furniture he can’t run around like lunatic anymore. But it’s a new and interesting place to explore, and the lure of the new TV is almost too much for him to handle. There are a million spots in the back to plug things into and he’s just mesmerized.

Matthew can now go down the stairs by himself, on his bum. So that’s his favourite activity now, going up and down the stairs all day. He did take a tumble once, but we’ve got thick carpeting so all it did was scare him. Of course he quickly got over it and is back in daredevil mode. Now we can permanently take down the baby gate at the top of the stairs (at least until another one comes along); it looks weird though having it down, as if something’s not finished at the staircase. The sucky part though is now we have to Matthew-proof 2 floors in the house cuz he won’t stay in one place for longer than 20 seconds. Or we’d have to get up and follow him every 20 seconds, which ain’t gonna happen. We’ll be too busy watching TV.

Matthew’s list of peeps

Here is everyone Matthew can recognize and call by name:

-Me – “Mommy” or “Moooooooommmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy”
-Chris – “Daddy”
-Granny – “Grenny” or “Genny”
-Grampa – “Ampa”
-Babcia – “Babcha” or “Baptie”
-Aunt Stefi – “Tetti”
-Brent (cousin) – “Ben”
-Riley (1 cousin, 1 friend, 1 babysitter’s son) – “Iyee”
-Alex (my friend’s daughter) – “Ackie”
-Avery (my friend’s son) – “Ayee”
-Aunt Miranda (my friend with the aforementioned kids) – “Anda” or “Mur-ann-da” when he’s annoyed that I can’t figure out what he’s saying
-Bill and Mary (next door neighbours) – “Bam”, get it?

For those who haven’t made it on the list yet, fear not cuz you’ll be added soon. He’s still trying to say “peaches” properly; it still comes out “peetoo”. I don’t see how that works either.

I always knew boys were gross

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, that’s what little boys are made of. But wait, they forgot bug guts and boogers!

My little guy is getting really gross. His new thing now is whenever he sees a spider, he must squish it…with his bare hands! Blah! Now don’t take this to mean that I’m afraid of spiders because I’m not. What grosses me out is the thought of spider guts all over his hands, and worse, him licking the spider guts off before I have a chance to wash them off. Eeeewwww! So we’re now calling him “Matthew the Spider Slayer”. He also apparently squashes other bugs too, like ants. He’ll stomp on them on the sidewalks and shout out “eeewww!”.

And then this morning I was trying to retrieve a rather large blockage from his nostril (read booger) and he wouldn’t let me do it. He backs up, and crams his own finger up his nose. Alright, let him do the dirty work himself, I think to myself. Then he must show me what he dug up. But when I told him to get it away from me, he started waving it in my face and the booger flew off the finger into my lap somewhere and I was searching desperately for this thing to put it in the garbage and all the while he’s laughing his head off at me!

I was right when I was 6 years old; boys are yucky!

Baby Shmear nickname explained in previous post comments

I guess not everyone knows why we call Matthew “Baby Shmear”. Someone asked, so for those who haven’t figured it out on their own, please read the comments under the “Baby Meer” post.

Chrissy