Thanksgiving Feast

Declan's preschool had their annual preschool feast yesterday.  There was a very cute programme with each of the preschool classes singing two songs. There was a class of pilgrims, a class of Indians, and Declan's class- a class of turkeys.  I knew this would be a challenge for him - singing in front of a couple hundred strangers, so my only hope was that he would wear his turkey hat.  I got my wish.  It was all very adorable, but the actual performance went a bit sideways. 

Click here if you enjoy cruelty to turkeys.

When the turkeys took the stage, Declan did okay until he noticed me sitting pretty much right in front of him. He got a big laugh when he tried to leap off the stage to get to me. He cried through the rest of the songs but gamely tried to do a few of the actions anyway. The show must go on.

Afterwards, we shared a feast with all the preschoolers, their parents and grandparents.  It was pretty sweet.  And Declan wore his turkey hat for the next 6 hours.   I loved every minute of it.

Declan Phelps

When Declan was 6 months old we did a mommy and me swim class, but only for a couple of lessons.  It was expensive and just involved singing the alphabet to the babies while we dragged them through the water.  I figured that  I could do that without paying someone for the privilege.  But at our first class I took this picture which remains one of my favourites:

I just wanted an excuse to post that cute picture.  Anyway, after a 2 year hiatus we have resumed swim lessons.   He got so comfortable in the water this summer that I didn't want to lose the momentum over the winter months.  So a few lessons in and now Declan can swim a couple of strokes on his own.  Awesome!

Scientific Observations

Since Declan has been slow coming into language, I have made some observations that might pass other parents by.   The more words children acquire, the more unreasonable demands they make.  This is a direct, straight line correlation.  Thanks to a year of intensive speech therapy with the good folks at Access Schools, Declan's demands are now pretty incessant. 

Whenever we are in the car, he points the opposite direction to where we are headed and demands to go the other way.  Whatever song is playing in the car, Declan demands "Different song on!"  Apparently, Mama's little hipster hates every song ever written.  A couple of weeks ago, Declan woke us up at 3 AM hollering that he wanted to go to the pumpkin patch and wanted to go NOW.  Almost daily I get a demand to go either to the airport or the grocery store.  How did he intuit the two places I least enjoy taking him to?  I have no idea.

Here is his demand this morning. It's a crummy video, but kind of a tearjerker if your name happens to be either Grandma or Grandpa.



Fiesta!

Tonight we went to an authentic Mexican fiesta - it was our housekeeper Sylvia's daughter's 3rd birthday.  Apparently in Mexican culture, the 3rd birthday for girls is a mini-quinceanera.  A tresanera if you will.  So it was a 3rd birthday with a rented hall, catered dinner a dj, and a 100+ guests.


I think these people just like to party.

Declan had a great time running around after all the other kids.  None of whom apparently have bedtimes. 

After the big kids finished a rousing game of musical chairs, Declan dragged his own chair into the center of the room and climbed up on it as if to say "What's the big deal?".