Practicing our animal noises

Whenever Calvin sees an animal, he doesn't say, "sheep" or "cow," instead he either baaaas or moooos at them.  He has associated animals with their noises for a while now (3 months?) but it is always fun to have him "perform" for our friends and family when we Skype.  We try hard to add new animals to the mix and keep it interesting.  Sometimes we play the animal noise game too often and when you ask him a question, he just gives you this look like, "Uhh, Mom, I've done that one already."  So it has been on our to-do list to get a video to capture his animal noises.  Most of our video attempts have resulted in distractions and feature him saying one or two animals before running off to play with his ball. I lucked out yesterday when I picked him up from dagis and he was in a chatty mood.  He even added two new animals that he has never done before -- horse and bird.  We are always amazed at the amount of information he absorbs.

So, here is a little video of Calvin and his animal noises (says his uber proud momma):

The perils of teaching your child about nature

Calvin helping me pick blueberries

The nature trails/forest around our house is full of berries and it is really fun to walk along the paths and snack as you go.  I decided, being the nature-loving mom I am, to take Calvin on a fun blueberry picking extravaganza.  I had visions of strolling along the forest path and showing him the joys of picking berries.  He loves picking the black currants in our backyard and successfully picked some without eating them all, so I figured we could actually do well on this mission.  We might even pick enough for blueberry pancakes tomorrow!

It turns out that Calvin was more interested in