His favorite things, Part 2

One of my first posts on this blog was about Ty's favorites. Although I could give you a few updates (his favorite number is still 6, favorite color is brown--although it was green yesterday, and favorite letter is T), the purpose of this post is a little different.

I'm posting to tell you about a new habit Ty's developed: Whenever you give him a choice, he picks what he wants by saying "(insert choice) is my favorite."

Here's an example:
Me: "Tyler, do you want a cheese stick or applesauce."
Ty: "Cheese sticks are my favorite."

The nice part is that he frequently says the opposite when he doesn't like something. Instead of saying "I don't like that" or "Ewww, that's yucky," he simply says "That's not my favorite."

If he keeps this up, it may come in handy later in life. I can just see his wife asking him if he likes the dress that she's wearing and him responding "It's not my favorite." It probably will work better than "Eww, that's yucky."

The next American Idol

On Monday morning, I was driving Ty to school with the radio on. All of a sudden, I heard him mumbling something in the back...saywhatyaneedtosay, saywhatyaneedtosay. Our little boy was singing along to the radio for the first time to John Mayer's "Say What You Need to Say." Guess it's time to make sure we're paying attention to what comes on the radio--there are quite a few songs that I wouldn't want to hear in his sweet little voice.

Christening of the kayak in the waters next to JFK

As I mentioned a few posts back, Spring has begun to show its face every once in a while here in NY. Since it was a balmy 70 degrees and sunny yesterday, we decided to take our new kayak on its first trip. In an effort to make it a fairly short, but interesting trip (since we weren't sure how Ty would react to sitting still for an extended period of time), we ventured to Jamaica Bay, which is right next to JFK airport. Basically, you can look in one direction and watch the planes take off and look the other direction and see the Empire State Building...an interesting "nature" experience. Interestingly enough, the Bay is well known for having 200 species of birds and excellent fishing.

Although we'll probably go east on the island next time we go, we had a great time. Ty loved having a picnic on the water and had fun turning the reel on Jeff's fishing pole. He was thrilled everytime they caught some seaweed. He stayed seated and loved his new "special" jacket (aka life preserver). Below are a couple of pictures from our trip (if you expand the picture and look closely, you can see the subway train and JFK in the background).

Advice from a toddler

Tonight I showed Ty a band-aid that I had on a small cut on my arm. He looked at me sweetly and said, "Aww, Mommy, you have to be careful."

Time to hide the vegetables?

I recently read an article in Wondertime that talked about how hiding pureed vegetables in your child's food (promoted by Jessica Seinfeld and others) is not the best way to go because then kids will never learn to like vegetables in their true form.

I'm not sure where I stand on the issue yet, but I do recently sense a need to get more creative in how I feed Ty his vegetables. You see, our little boy who once ate anything you put in front of him, has developed an new practice whenever we give him vegetables (with the exception of canned green beans and peas and chopped kale hidden in meatloaf and on pizza): He slowly picks them one by one off of his plate (he has even peeled them off of pizza), looks us straight in the eyes, tilts his head, and says, "I don't like these, remember?"

Two busy Saturdays

The best thing about Spring arriving is that we tend to get out of the house more on weekends. The last two Saturdays were evidence of that.

Last weekend, we visited a St. Patrick's Day parade (delayed because of the timing of Holy Week and Easter) in a very Irish Catholic village next to us. We must have seen 10 groups of bagpipers and 10 fire engines. Ty loved both and was talking about the parade for several days afterwards.

This weekend, we took the train into the city to view the Bodies exhibit. Ty wasn't quite as interested as we were, but he was a good sport. We then headed to Madison Square Park and stood in line for about an hour and a half to get our first Shake Shack burgers and shakes of the year and then headed up to Central Park for a while. It was a beautiful day and fun to be in the city again.

Here a couple of pictures of Ty in Madison Square Park (one from two years ago and one from today). For more pictures of the parade and Ty at the park, click here: http://picasaweb.google.com/teri.schmidt/March29April52008

Something that always brings a smile to my face

In the past six months, Ty has become more and more interested in having me and Jeff play with him. And, although I have to admit that sometimes I'd rather rest for a few minutes right when I get home from work, there is absolutely nothing sweeter than him taking my hand in his and guiding me where he wants me to go--even when it is to pretend that I am a dolphin swimming in the pretend water in our basement for the 20th time that week.