Bus Ride!

Matthew has developed a love for all things with wheels. Whether it is in the car or on the sidewalk, he loves to point at all the big trucks, cars and buses on the street and say "ooohhhohoho!!" He does the same for tractors on the farm. His favourite toys are his Little People school bus and a little John Deere tractor that he drives around making engine sounds and parking them along the wall.

So I thought he would love to actually go for a ride in one of these big vehicles. We phoned up our friends Jenn and Madeline and planned a day to go for a bus ride downtown to do some shopping at MEC.

Everything was going great until we got on the bus. Matthew was not as excited to be on the bus as he was to just see it go by. I kind of thought this might happen based on his reaction a few weeks ago to going for a tractor ride at the farm. It was just too big and too loud and he wasn't feeling the safety of being strapped in all snug-as-a-bug in his car seat. I thought for a moment that we might even have to get off and walk home, but we stuck it out and soon the tears faded. Then he noticed all the other cars, trucks and buses outside the bus window and soon we were hearing "ooohhhohoho!!" again as he pointed to them all.

He was much happier to get on the bus on the way home, although still a little unsure of the whole thing. His favourite place to sit was on my lap, but I didn't mind at all because it meant that I was getting some awesome cuddles which are somewhat rare with this little kid. And it also meant that I didn't have to walk all the way home from downtown because the bus was too scary. All in all, a very successful adventure. These are some pictures of our return trip...

He even ventured out to his own seat for a little while.

Big boy sitting on the bus

Looking out the window

Seeing other vehicles

Cuddles with mom

Vocab update

Language is coming along pretty well now, so these updates may start coming more regularly. Matthew is certainly in the language learning mode.

"No" - classic, remarkably unhelpful because he uses it all the time, but also really really cute. It is never said in a mad way, always is a really soft kind of matter-of-fact way. He uses it regularly when he is doing something that he is not supposed to - often just before he does it. This is by far his favourite word right now. Excellent.

"yesh" - this is a fairly recent. When he starts into his repeated "no no no no" we start trying to get him to say "yes" - which he has now become pretty good at. He doesn't actually use it ever, and sometimes when we say yes, he says no, like-a so:

Matthew: "no"
Parent: "yes"
Matthew: "no"
Parent: "yes"
Matthew: "no"
Parent: "yes"
Matthew: "no"
Parent: "yes"

A precursor of what is to come perhaps? It doesn mean that he understnds there is an association between yes and no, I guess he hasn't quite figured out any reason he would want to respond to something in the affirmative.

"Please" - this is a new sign language one. 'Please' is basically like rubbing a circle on your chest with the palm of your hand. Matthew's adaptation is to sort of 'sweep' his chest with his hand a few times. He hasn't self initiated this yet, but when he signs for more and we say "more please?" he will sign please. Today he even put them together. He also put more and "nana" together today as well. Sentences!

"ann dee" - for auntie. This one is just coming, but it is there and he associates it with Luanne and pictures of Luanne pretty exclusively, although not super consistently.

"der dee" for dirty. We have used 'dirty' to explain (as much as you can explain something to a 17 month old) why he shouldn't be touching things. As in "don't touch that Matthew, it is dirty". This includes things like the potty, garbage, the toilet, the plunger and things like that. He also doesn't like his hands to be dirty, and used to use "uh oh" if he got them mucky. He now associated "der dee" for all those.