Our little goose herder

As I sit here typing at 8:30 at night (this being an HOUR past Toby’s bedtime) I am typing to the sweet sounds of my son yelling at the geese.

No, we have not cruelly kept him up past his bedtime as a full time goose herder. He is actually in his crib right now PRACTICING. He is becoming a SPONGE for language. He will say anything and everything as long as it just requires either one syllable or the repetition of a consonant.

Blueberries : baba

Cheese : Che

Milk : Ma

Water : wawa

Grandma : Gaga

Geese ; GO!

And knowing WORDS makes sleeping that much harder- - because now you can actually SAY things as you lie there reflecting on your day.

Again, I fall victim to my own advice. This falls into the category of yet another bad behaviour I have innocently demonstrated and unkowningly TAUGHT to my son.

The first time he demonstrated this to us it was raining out. He saw the geese and frantically NEEDED to get outside. All I got on him was his yellow rain hat and his blue monster boots before I realized that further attempts at clothing him were going to be a futile effort. (See photo above) I opened the door and he SHOT outside loudly CLAPPING his hands together and yelling “GO! GO!”

At first I didn’t know WHAT he was doing. Until he picked up a rock and threw it 2 inches in front of him. And then repeated the whole thing over. And over. And over. Again.

Can you guess what we do about 100 times a day to scare off the geese?

So now he’s still awake in his crib and he’s practicing his new phrases to himself. Sometimes I’ll hear him sweetly say, “Dada?” or “Mama…” but mostly tonight it’s the clapping hands and “GO!” that he’s working on.

Perhaps I’ll look at putting the moniter down by the lake….and to think we almost bought a dog to take care of the goose problem….