A joyful, jolly July

I don’t know what it is that makes toddlers so cute. Maybe it’s the slightly uncoordinated way they do everything, combined with such earnest concentration. Or the transparency of their joy. Whatever it is, Cameron is just a laugh a minute at the moment. Here are some of the cute things he’s been up to lately.

Biker boy
His legs are finally long enough to enable him to maneuver himself so his plastic motorbike is the flavor of the moment. ‘Mokike’ is often the first word out of his mouth when he wakes up and with the cold evenings we occasionally let him ride it up and down the passage.

A few nights ago Cam woke at 4:30 and after settling him back to sleep, I walked straight into the motorbike which was lying in wait in the passage. In the resulting silence, a little ‘Uh oh’ was heard from Cam’s room. Twenty minutes later he started calling for Col, and the motorbike claimed its second victim. A slightly louder ‘uh oh’ was then heard, followed by ‘mokike’. There was no getting him back to sleep after that!

Mom’s little helper
While picking veggies the other day Cameron started plucking the leaves off a lettuce, putting them into the soil and instructing them to ‘Grow, grow, grow.’

When feeding the birds, each scoop of bird seed was accompanied by ‘Nyum nyum.’

The day after we’d washed my car, he brought me the bucket and sponge while saying ‘Wass’. He then proceeded to gather his toy cars and give them all a patchy clean.

Sharing is caring
If a plastic dinosaur or animal is around at a mealtime, it’s often lucky enough to share in the meal. A tiger recently had numerous mouthfuls of tomato sauce (each one licked off its nose by Cam), and this morning his purple dinosaur had a few sips of Daddy’s coffee.

Cam’s politeness extends beyond mealtimes as well. When we see a bird, dog or cat, it’s greeted with an enthusiastic ‘Hel-oooo’ and a wave of the hand. He’s a bit more wary of humans though, usually running up to take my hand and murmuring ‘Peoples’ from the safety of my knees.

Always watching
Cameron is incredibly perceptive and it’s astonishing how often he’ll start copying something after only seeing it once. Colin showed him a short video of monster trucks and a day later he was using his big yellow dump truck to drive over some of the smaller ones. (And dropping it from great heights yelling ‘Monshter!’)

While reading ‘The hungry caterpillar’ he picks the food off the page and ‘eats’ it, smacking his lips after each satisfying mouthful.

A week back he found the handle for the pasta machine and it’s since become his trumpet – played with much zeal and wiggling of the hips.

Literally too cute
I’ll end off with an incident from two days ago. Colin arrived home from work as the sun was setting but Cameron was reluctant to come inside after running out to greet him. Col tried persuasion, ‘Cameron, I’m closing the door. Are you going to sleep outside?’

‘Da!’ Was the reply. (We’re not sure why, but ‘yes’ is always ‘da’.)

‘You’ll get cold.’

‘Da,’ again, but no movement towards the house.

‘Okay, night Cam,’ and we closed the door. We then looked out of the window to see our son curling up on the grass preparing for his night under the stars!