Chuckles

I don’t have the time or energy for a long post tonight but I wanted to jot down a few things that Oliver has done lately that have completely cracked me up. And most of them are related to his new trick... counting.

• Oliver started counting last week. He did great with one and two but kinda lost it after that. One of his first attempts went like this: “One. Two. Nine. Done!.” Now he consistently counts to three (I will get a video soon and post it). He will get to the top of the slide and sit down and yell: “One! Two! Three! Go!” and then slide down. The other day we went to the park with Dauphin and Kelly (more on that later because it was an awesome day) and Oliver was setting up to race Dauphin. He lined up with Dauphin and then counted to the start: “One! Two! Go!”  He totally skipped three. That little cheater. 

• We’ve been using time out for certain “infractions” lately with mixed success. The thing that always always always lands him in time out is playing in the dogs’ water bowl. He’s done well for awhile but in the last couple of weeks he has repeatedly splashed in the water bowl. When he screws up we put him in time out and tell him why he’s there. We also will tell him how much time he has left. At one point last week Brian even counted down the last ten seconds for him. On Sunday afternoon Oliver splashed in the dogs’ water, I put him in time out and told him why he was there and then tried to ignore him while he served his time. A few seconds later, however, he started shouting: “Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!...”  He was counting down the end of his time out. It was so so so hard not to laugh. 

• He now calls the cats “girls” since he follows his dad’s example. Brian walks into the garage every morning and says to the cats: “Hi, girls.” Oliver now says the same. He can’t say boys for the dogs so he says “guys” which is his go to word for a lot of things - his toys, the dogs, the men who drive the recycling truck (who, by the way, made an unscheduled second pass on our street a few weeks ago because Oliver was outside cheering them on), the five year old boy who lives across the street whose name is Zakai (it’s pretty close, right?). 

That’s it for now. More later this week.