Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved Lego. I was going to search for something between the sizes of the Mega Bloks he’d been using when he was younger and the standard Lego size, but apparently he’s been working with standard Lego at school, so HRH brought up the huge bag of Lego that t! bequeathed to the boy and opened it up for him. (For those who were in the S:1999 game, there were parts of Moonbase Alpha still extant but not for long. I rescued the communicator before the boy wrecked it, although he did put wheels on it before I got to it.) We have made countless cars and trains and spaceships and houses since then. If anyone’s looking for gift ideas, a pile of Lego wheels would be good because there are never enough. In the realm of toys and games HRH has also introduced him to Mario Party 8 on the Wii. And as HRH and I plan to buy ourselves Rock Band for Christmas (terribly romantic, I know, but I’d rather do this than get one another things less likely to be used) I have no doubt the boy will soon be introduced to the drums there as well.

WALL*E has succeeded in completely and utterly eradicating any other film from the boy’s memory, and it’s all he watches now. He listens to the soundtrack while playing in his room and falling asleep, and now he wanders around singing the beginning of “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” as if he was our very own Michael Crawford. It’s adorable to hear him burble, “Listen, Barnaby!” and “we won’t come home until we’ve kissed a girl!” Book-wise, we’ve just finished The Wind in the Willows, and are about to start on Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series. We all love the snuggling in the big bed and reading a chapter every night.

The biggest news this past month was the bunk bed tree fort (which is what he calls it, although the fort does double duty as a pirate ship at times, as seen in the picture). HRH and I love the twin size bed because we can actually stretch out on it and cuddle him. The boy loves it because he can roll around on it, and he loves playing on the upper level (it’s where all the tins of Lego are stored). We’ve moved all his toys into his room now, and the living room is once again a free zone. He brings toys out, but we’re enforcing the put-the-others-away-before-you-play-with-a-new-one rule.

One of the other exciting things that’s happened this month is of course the piles of snow we’ve already received. Even when there was only a scattering and the grass was still visible, he made the most of it. “I’ve never seen any child make so much out of so little,” his educator told HRH. “He was rolling in it that first day.” We’ve been adding a few seasonal decorations as the days go by. He made cut-out Christmas trees and painted a cone I’d made to look like a tree, and helped make paper chains, too. We introduced him to the Advent calendar, but he forgets most of the time (and so do we, really). Evidently we’re not doing a very good job differentiating between the season and the day itself, because Liam goes back and forth between flinging a hand out at all the snow and lights and saying, “But it *is* Christmas!” and saying very seriously in reply to something we say, “But it’s not Christmas *yet*.” Poor kid. It must be hard for him to figure out the difference because there are all sorts of Christmas-related activities going on like parties and concerts. The upstairs neighbours even hung the usual Yule stockings on the banister and he ‘s just angsting over what’s inside them. He’s at the age now where he knows he’s not supposed to open them, but that he’s still young enough that if he ‘forgot’ that he’s not supposed to open them he might get away with it. (In his mind, that is, not in our eyes.) I’d wrapped Mousme‘s hat in a gift bag and set it in to corner of the room until I next see her and he found it, bringing it into the kitchen while I was making dinner. “Oh, Mama, what’s this?” he said. “It’s Mousme’s hat,” I said. “Oh, can I see what’s inside?” he said. And before I could say No, or Yes but be very careful because it’s not yours, he had slipped the tissue paper out of the bag and deftly unwrapped it. Even though he’d seen me knitting it and had seen the finished product he held it up and said, “Oh, Mama, it’s beautiful! Great job!” Then he wrapped it back up again and slipped it back into the bag, and even replaced the bag exactly where it had been. So he got the fun of unwrapping a present after all, and he practised his gracious comments on a received item, and complimented me all at the same time. We’ll see how much of that he remembers in the upcoming week.

He’s figured out that knitting is something that I do and enjoy, and he wants to help. So he’ll come up to me and pick up the ball of yarn and say, “I’ll be your helper and hold this for you.” Which would be fine if he actually did hold it, but he doesn’t. He lifts it and pretends it’s a balloon, or drops it and then the cat chases it, or some other sort of mishap occurs. When it warmed up enough for me to wear my red coat and newly knitted scarf he looked at me while struggling to get his arms into his coat sleeves. “Why are you wearing that yarn around your neck?” he said. I thought it was interesting that he knows a knitted item is made of yarn, and that once it’s knitted up he stills identifies it as yarn, not whatever object it’s been knitted into.

In the milestone category, he left his first voice mail message on Ceri’s birthday. Despite coaching as to what to expect, when the beep sounded and the time came to leave his message he kind of hung there, a tiny smile on his face, waiting for someone to say something. I finally got him to say “Happy birthday!!!” (kind of slurred together and rushed and somewhat shouted), then I disconnected the call for him. I left a message afterwards explaining what had just happened. Ceri seemed amused by the effort he’d made, so all was well. He left his first blog comment this month, too. And of course he attended his first evening concert.

At his semiannual checkup the doctor reported that he weighs 35 lbs and stands 100 centimetres tall. That’s right; he’s hit a metre. We’re going through shoes like there’s no tomorrow; he’s gone up three shoe sizes in the past twelve months. He’s maintaining a steady weight and stretching upwards. I knew this before the doctor measured him because his 3T pants no longer need to be folded up like they did a couple of months ago. It’s unreal. He’s been going on eating binges too, where he essentially grazes all day and has two or three helpings of dinner. I was most impressed by this doctor’s appointment. For the first time Liam answered all of her questions himself (very clearly, too) and stood still on the scale and against the height chart.

He’s turning into more and more of a character every day. It’s great fun. I feel bad sometimes that I can’t keep up with him (well, he was home for almost six days straight with a bad cold last week, and I was sick too, but still) and my temper gets short when he doesn’t listen or ignores what we’re telling him (ditto), but he is three and a half and testing whatever boundary he can. For every frustration there are half a dozen things to love about him and praise. We’re lucky to have him.

Other Liam posts this past month:

– Liam attends his first non-Canada Day evening concert, and attends a cello lesson
– “You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don’t go down with me”
– Liam helps us vote in the provincial election
– the arrival of the bunk beds and the rearranging of the bedroom
– a future as the drummer in a punk band
– overheard from the back seat of the car