King Burger

Hungry Jacks is called Burger King here, but again Ben has given it his own personalised name - King Burger!

Villan-tines day

This is what Ben has been playing a bit since we did special stuff on Valentines day (I made it into a day of doing special stuff as a family - going out for breakfast, making special cards for each other etc.). When I first heard him talking about 'Villan-tines Day' I wondered to myself what this would be - would it be like a special day for villians where they get to do all the bad things they like to do? Well I actually played 'Villan-tines day' with him this afternoon, which involved him performing a 'Villan-tines day' show for me. This was a 'Hi-five' style show including using a headset while he was talking and involved segments including pretending to be dinosaurs, singing a song and pretending to go to the beach.

Move over Mr Potato Head...Here comes Mr Balloon Head!

The playgroup craft this week was making Balloon people (Ben didn't have time to do it at playgroup, so I brought home all the bits to do while Joanna was still sleeping). This involved blowing up a balloon and sticking eyes, nose, mouth, feet and hair on. When I asked Ben if he wanted short hair or long hair for his balloon person, he said short and he wanted to cut it. So Ben proceeded to give Mr Balloon Head a hair cut! (he sees me cutting Peter and his hair every few weeks so knew exactly what to do without any instructions from me - although I wouldn't want him to be cutting my hair!). Here's a video of the cut - I was quite impressed with his manners with the 'customer'.

Going to 'Old MacDonald'

Ben affectionately refers to MacDonalds as 'Old MacDonalds' (ie. he gets it mixed up with the nursery rhyme). And his favorite item would have to be the hash browns. So much so that while driving out to the cafe for breakfast on saturday, Ben decided he was hungry and wanted food now...so he suggested "we could stop off at Old MacDonalds and get some hash browns mum". On this occasion I had to explain to him that it wasn't that far to the cafe and also we weren't going past a MacDonalds (thankfully we had already passed the local MacDonalds already - without him noticing). He did end up having a hash brown for breakfast at the cafe, so it was all good.

Ben's latest toilet training achievements...

1. Is competent at peeing in the bush, without getting wet feet.
   
2. Pees and poos on a composting drop loo accompanied by the flies - "look dad it's composting now!"
3. Consistently only using 1 pair of undies a day.
4. Takes himself off to the toilet without telling us first (includes flushing and washing hands afterwards).

Chewing shirts...

It's a new habit that Ben seems to be forming and I really want to de-form. He get the neckline of his shirt and puts it in his mouth, holding it there with his teeth. My first thought is that this is stretching the neckline of his shirts and they are going to all start looking daggy. I have just had the though then, that maybe he has transferred some of his thumb sucking time to this shirt chewing thing. Don't know why and don't really know what to do about it except to tell him to get it out of his mouth when I see him doing it.

Ben-isms...

As most of you would know, Ben has a pretty good vocabulary for a 3 year-old. He is quite capable of pronouncing fairly complex words (and knowing what they mean, usually). A word like croissants he originally pronounced as "gazonks" (about 9 months ago), but he now says it correctly. However, there are some words that he seems to deliberately mis-pronounce. I'm not sure why... he just does.
Some examples that haven't been corrected (and my attempt at spelling what he says!):
olives = "ovverlees"
elephant = "everlint"
spaghetti = "bisgetty"
It's pretty easy to see where he gets them from (just swapping two consonants in each case). It's just kind of funny that he has persisted with these ones!
Anyway, we know what bisgetty and ovverlees are, so all is good!

Air guitar extraordinaire!

Ben did a bit of a show for Mel the other evening - something about a "dog mowing song" I think it was... you'll have to watch the video and see if you can figure it out!

Appreciation by tackling

Each morning when I leave for work, I try to give a hug for each of the kids and Mel.  Ben, being a 3 year-old, doesn't always want a hug - he sometimes runs away saying "no, don't want a hug from Dad".  So, I have to try something different to make sure he knows he's loved and appreciated.  So I offer to tackle him instead of giving him a hug.  He's happy with that - this morning he didn't want to give Dad a hug, but he was certainly happy to tackle Dad good-bye!