More ketchup

Given that this is set up to show the entries of the last two three months and has just gone snowy white, I thought we'd better write some more. Since last we talked Dom's had his second Christmas and second birthday. Being the lucky boy he is, our house is hidden under a thin layer of much-loved toys and books. After the previous Christmas where we bought him an unnecessarily expensive present which he then proceeded to ignore for the best part of a year, this time we reverted to shortarmed-longpocketed type and bought him a £12 wooden trainset which was an enormous hit (with him as well as me). Sure enough, his birthday rolled around and lots of people, including us, knowing a guaranteed hit when they saw one bought him just a little more track or bits. Helen thinks things have got out of hand and I think I could be on ebay bidding for more stuff instead of writing this ;-).

The biggest thing with Dom has been, as I've already alluded to, his speech. Super-cool Eloise may be able to sing along to the Beta Band and Evie may be an exquisitely affectionate little 'lovee', but Dom could talk the hind-leg off the proverbial donkey. We get spectacular motor-mouthed info bursts of what he's done that day at nursery ("Not nursery daddy, Panda's actually - nursery is for babies. You've been a bit silly there, Daddy"), reasoned arguments as to why he won't be partaking of this particular bit of dinner and very clear instructions as to which DVD he wants on as his 'nearly bedtime' treat. Sadly, a lot of his nursery conversation is about other toddlers (well, one in particular) nibbling him because he isn't quite so grown up when it comes to sharing toys. We're also well into the 'terrible twos' tantrum phase with a lot of wailing at perceived injustice and lacking a monitorable step Dom spends a fair amount of time on the naughty pouffe. We, of course, have to refer to this as the naughty stool because it's impossible to order him 'onto the naughty poof' with a straight face.

Dom's also enjoyed two holidays so far this year, a weekend expedition with Team Skoda to Fylingthorpe and a Harris family sojourn to the frozen Northumberland, where Helen and I celebrated our birthdays in fine style. He's also cheerfully weathered chickenpox (a special thankyou to everyone that helped us out during his banishment from nursery) and we're having the occasional success on the road to him being potty trained. He spends most of his time at nursery in his 'grundies' and is getting better at telling us when he needs to go, though frankly we could do with more than the two seconds notice he gives us.

Wallace and Gromit still looms large in his life, especially since his Aunty Carolyn and Uncle John bought him the Were-rabbit movie for his birthday. He had to be talked through his first viewing of the transformation scene ('Oooh, what's going on there, Mummy?') but now he loves it and eats up his greens 'like the were-rabbit'. Best of all, it would appear that his entire moral universe is now couched in W&G analogies. Over the bank holiday weekend, an edited for its afternoon slot 'Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves' was on (a superschlocky guilty pleasure - see also 'Face on/off' this week). Dom failed to understand, having only caught the end, why the gloriously hammy Alan Rickman was taking such punishment until I explained that he was a 'baddie'. 'Like the naughty penguin, daddy?' 'Yes'. He seemed quite contented with that and settled down for the rest.

Life remains great.