Oliver's Tail

So, the other day Oliver came to me and wanted to play catch. When I threw ball at him he made no attempt to catch it, rather, he explained to me that he wanted to hit it with his tail. (I think he saw a show with dinosaurs playing catch with their tails.) We had played that game before so instead of throwing the ball at his chest I threw it to his bottom. He then informed me that that was not his tail and that his tail was under his pants. Being the obliging mother that I am I helped him take his pants off. (Sam, who was in the room and had caught on a lot sooner than I had was smirking by this point). After throwing the ball at his now pant-less bottom he once again insisted that that was not his tail and that his tail was in his diaper. It was at this point that I caught on to exactly what a "tail was. Seeing as there were a number of people around and in an effort to avoid any indecent exposure I diverted his attention by offering to find him an even better tail. Hence, the above outfit. What I was not prepared for was just how much he would love it. He insisted on attempting to fly off of every piece of furniture in the house and flat out refused to remove the wings and tail for his nap or for a trip to the store (although I did manage to put his pants back on him for that outing!) A few days later we finally had to hide the wings and tail in order to get him to stop putting them back on.

Sunny Days

The weather has finally turned warm and we just can't enough of it!


We went to a Bees game this weekend with the SUU alumni association. Sam says it isn't really summer until you watch some baseball. (Personally I can think of a lot more entertaining ways to get into summer, but whatever). Alas, the game was cut short for us when Sam let out and over-enthusiastic cheer while holding Ruby on his lap, he completely freaked her out to the point that packing up and leaving was the only way to make her happy again. I guess she is a girl after my own heart!

Oliver thought it was great however. My dad has a lathe and recently made Oliver his own wooden baseball bat. I think my dad may regret it now that Oliver is constantly pleading him to "come pitch for me Grandpa." At the game he enjoyed picking out the pitcher and the hitter and yelling and clapping whenever anybody else did.

A Ruby Pile

One of Oliver's favorite games is to make a Ruby pile. Basically this consists of him laying on top of Ruby and then making Sam and I lay on top of him until we make one great big Peay family pile. Ruby is pretty accommodating seeing as she absolutely adores her brother and really has no choice in the matter.

Aside from making "Ruby Piles" Oliver's other latest craze is dinosaurs. Ollie gets to watch one TV show every morning while I take a shower and a few months ago he switched allegiance from Sesame Street to a new PBS show called Dinosaur Train. Our entire existence pretty much revolves around Dinosaur Train now. For example, he spends all day calling out, "tickets, tickets please" after you give him a ticket he punches it on his claw, a.k.a. his toe, and tells you "thank you very much!" When ever we drive under an underpass he call out "Time Tunnel." Obviously you would have to actually watch the show to comprehend all of this, but I would recommend just taking my word for it.

He is learning quite a bit from the show as well. The other day he was eating my mom's houseplant and when I asked him what he was doing he explained that he was a herbivore so he had to eat plants and leaves. One morning when I asked him if he had any ideas about what we should do that day he told me that we just needed a hypothosis. At the look of confusion on my face he said, "you know mom, a hypothesis, it's an idea you can test." He hypothesized that the wind was blowing in a particular direction and we took a flag outside to test his idea. Last week he informed me that he had brachiosaurus feces in his diaper. (Hopefully one day soon he will learn to get that brachiosaurus feces into the toilet instead of his diaper!)

I would prefer that he stuck to Sesame Street so that he could pick up on his numbers and letters instead, but I'm sure one day it will be important for him to understand the meaning of nocturnal as well!

Easter

This year we made a greater effort to teach Oliver the meaning of Easter. He picked up on the story amazingly well. His favorite part of course was the big rock that was rolled in front of Jesus' tomb. (No surprise there!) And now every time we drive past a church with a cross on it he reminds me that Jesus died on a cross and got owies in his hands and in his feet.


The Easter bunny did pay us a visit this year, but he obviously didn't check the weather before filling the baskets. However, the snow certainly didn't deter Oliver from heading outside with his sunglasses and gardening tools!


Here is Ruby and daddy relaxing after Easter dinner.



We had a big Easter dinner and Easter Egg hunt and Grandma and Grandpa Cornwell's house. Oliver loved being there and spending time with all of his cousins. He did loose all interest in the Easter egg hunt however, at the sight of an old deflated football. He already has his priorities and sports, or balls, definitely take precedence over candy.

It has really been great to live close by and get to participate in family events.

Tour de St. George

In May we traveled down to St. George so that Sam could ride in the Tour de St. George with his brothers. It turned out to be quite the family event and we had tons of fun hanging out with all of Sam's family. Sam started planning to ride the race in January and had outlined a pretty rigorous training schedule. However, jobs, cold weather (and general laziness) got in the way and with a month to go until race time the "race" was downgraded to just a tour. In the end, it was just a "ride" with his brothers and I was not even allowed to refer to it as a race. It really didn't matter though, Sam rode the 30 mile "ride" and thoroughly enjoyed himself.




Oliver thoroughly enjoyed waiting at the finish line with his cousins. It wasn't exactly warm and balmy as we had hoped, but that didn't deter Oliver from getting absolutely soaked. Oliver has three cousins from South Weber that he absolutely adores. He refers to them as his girlfriends and often begs to go and see them.


We got to see Sam's brother and his family from Arizona, this is Ollie and Marley, they are only six days apart.

Ruby and Vance are just six days apart as well, you would almost think that we had planned that :)