Sneaky Trucks, Collapsing Bridges and Playing Pillows

One of Quinn's favourite things to do right now is play "sneaky trucks". I have no idea where the name came from. It must be some offhand thing we said that he glommed onto. Anyway, it involves someone being the cement truck driver while Quinn operates the front loader. The cement truck driver has to drive around with a load of wooden blocks. Then Quinn/front loader driver announces that he needs a load of blocks. The cement truck driver backs up, complete with back-up beeping, and then the driver gets out, goes around to the back and operates a pretend lever to dump the blocks into the front loader. Then the front loader driver goes crazy, shaking the blocks out of his bucket all over. In the original version, the cement truck driver had to collect the blocks up from all over. In a continuing effort to not play games where Quinn does all the ordering and everyone else does all the work, we've compromised on the cement truck driver collecting nearby blocks and the front loader driver pushing the rest over with his front loader for collection. He'll play it for 20 minutes straight. He'll play it every day. He'll play it several times a day.

Previous to that, it was "collapsing bridge" that was the popular game. Quinn would "make a bridge" by stretching over the chasm between the couch and the ottoman. Mommy or daddy would then have to crawl underneath the bridge, upon which the bridge would collapse on top of mommy/daddy. Sometimes we'd just then lay there in a heap. Sometimes the bridge would get flipped back up on the couch to giggles. Sometimes the bridge would flop off mommy/daddy and run around for a flying head tackle on mommy/daddy. Right after supper became a popular time for "collapsing bridge" so one day daddy joked about pizza flying out his nose after one bridge collapse. That then became the ongoing shtik, with various food flying out of daddy's nose and the mysterious invisible raccoon whose favourite foods were nose pizza and nose cereal.

The classic "Playing Pillows" has also had longstanding popularity, both on the couch and on Mommy and Daddy's bed. It basically involves a big pile of pillows, and various front flops, back flops and flying tackles. Quinn then sometimes hides under the pillows to "go to sleep" (emulating his father's slightly odd pillow predilections methinks...), followed by a euphoric "Time To Get Up!" announcement and more flops and tackles.

Who needs battery-powered flashing and blinking to have fun?

Rover the Robot

I always wanted one. I finally bought a Roomba Robotic Vacuum. It drives around on its own, seemingly randomly sometimes, scooping up dirt with a little brush/vaccuum on its underside. It's got several sensors to avoid obstacles or react to bumping into things, and has "advanced algorithms" for full floor coverage. Watching to see if it eventually gets a plainly visible bit of dirt is a little like high-speed cow-chip bingo. It even returns to its docking station when it's done or its battery is exhausted.

It's been a source of great fascination in the house. I love studying how it goes about its business and trying to figure out how it's making its decisions. Bec loves to micromanage it, picking it up and making it go over missed spots (I'm working at getting her to be at peace with the Advanced Algorithms...). Quinn gets up on the couch and chatters excitedly about its progress.

We decided upon a name of 'Rover' for our robot. Rover has already become a part of the family. In fact, Rover might have already surpassed our perpetually-hidden cat Tulsa on the depth chart. We joke about Rover tickling our toes. Quinn woke up the other morning and said "Time to turn on Rover!" (or 'Woever' as he calls him). One other day Quinn was having a complete meltdown until I played the Rover Fascination card - upon which Quinn was completely galvanized and forgot all about his malaises. That was an unforseen benefit not shown in the glossy brochures. Even Tulsa, terrified of everything, seems to not even notice it.

As a side benefit, it's even actually not bad as a vacuum. It's not a replacement by any means, but it keeps a lot of the summertime detritus in check. Like all pets though, it has achieved status enough to likely warrant expensive repairs when the inevitable breakdowns occur. Until then, we'll keep studying, coaching and placing our cow-chip bingo bets.

Slobbery Harmonicas

Quinn was proudly playing his harmonica when I walked in the door from work today. "Daddy play" he said emphatically, triumphantly holding up a dripping, slobbery harmonica. "Uh, sure....daddy play... {ugh...}" says daddy. Fortunately the low 'C' seemed least awash, and even more fortunately Quinn was excited enough about his harmonica as to immediately want it back after one blow (ick) and one draw (ack! what was I thinking!) by daddy.

You just have to be immune to slobber with a two year old.

Ice Cream Frenzy

We went to dinner at a nearby restaurant last Sunday. We asked Quinn if he wanted ice cream for dessert. He said "YESSSSSS!!!!" in a way that made his ice-cream-loving mom proud. Out comes an amount of ice cream about three times as much as we'd hoped. Bec and I plowed through our own shared dessert as fast as possible to begin to defray the amount of ice cream Quinn ingested as much as possible. Quinn scooped huge spoonfuls of ice cream into (and around the general vicinity of) his mouth.

We decided to walk a bit before heading home. Quinn immediately went charging down the sidewalk full tilt in a frenzy that was anything but plain vanilla. At a used car lot he began weaving around the security posts, then circling back doing it the other way, over and over again. He ran around the posts and parking lot with hair flying and a huge grin for 10 minutes without pause. After a while I decided quite possibly he could walk the whole 4 km home under ice cream power. I retrieved our bikes and we started to coax him in the direction of home. Sidewalk running, raised curb balancing, and yet more empty parking lot careening ensued.

After achieving about a quarter of the distance home in anything but a straight line, we had to bundle him back into the bike trailer due to bedtime constraints. I honestly wonder how far we would have made it. It was about 20 solid minutes of sugar rush. On the one hand, we were alarmed by the reaction, but secretly a little gratified that he obviously didn't get a lot of sugar, which is somewhat difficult to achieve in this day and age. We'll have to build up his tolerance I suppose - both his daddy and mommy have had years of building such an immunity - but it sure is mighty entertaining at this stage.