Little Tidbits

So much imaginative pretending is happening around here! The beanbag is a swimming pool and his underwear is a swim cap. Anything long and skinny is a baseball bat. Oven mitts are baseball gloves (although Grandma Kathy found him a preschool sized baseball glove at a garage sale, and it is truly a beloved possession that is played with every single day) and just the other day he was pretending to drive a car to trombone lessons with his little friend. They got out of the “car” and ran a bit to another location where they were singing like a trombone. If Mr. TOF is not home, he pretends to play with his imaginary friend who shares the same name as his big brother. There’s always an invisible baseball game happening in the living room or outside in the yard. The other day he was pretending to mow the lawn like Mr. TOF and asked for a pair of headphones to wear because when Mr. TOF mows the lawn he always wears his noise cancelling ear muffs that have a little radio inside so he can listen to Minnesota Twins play baseball. Luckily I happened to have a pair of broken over the ear headphones that did just the trick, and he was so, so happy to pretend to mow the lawn with them like a worker guy.

Sometimes I mix four or five chocolate chips in a half cup of nuts for a snack, and Peanut Maximus calls them “black nuts.” So very tasty!

He’s been loving a “nap tent” of a blanket draped over his crib or the lower bunk bed to make a little cozy sleeping space at nap or in the evening.

We go for a tiny little bike ride almost every afternoon. I can barely keep up with the balance bike these days.

I found our box of wooden train tracks and magnetic trains in the attic last week and he’s been over the moon. The whole family room is covered in train tracks and little cars of every sort. I get in trouble when I clean them up.

Cooking crazy food in the play kitchen has also been very popular, and he loves to dump out the utensil drawer in my kitchen and steal some of my cooking pots to have all the right equipment.

He loves anything to do with construction vehicles, and playing with an excavator and dump truck in the sandbox can go on for a long time.