Little gosling stopped at every tree on our way, circling them, looking for spiderwebs and enthusiastically pointing them out to us, “mummy, there’s a spider web”! We observed red and black beetles bustling up and down the tree, various mosses growing on the trunks, fungi growing amongst the roots of the trees. We managed to distract his attention away from the trees with a big flock of geese that had left behind lots of feathers and wildly colored blue and green dragonflies playing chase above the well kept water basins in the park. 

He happily sped on his balance bike, faster and faster, asking us to run alongside him and laughing whole-heartedly all along. He was so busy, that he didn’t even want to stop to eat the delicious hamburger fresh from the grill which he had found so irresistible other times. Everything caught his attention. The planes flying above, taking off from the nearby airport made him look up and start singing “Avion cu motor,/ ia-ma si pe mine-n zbor,/ nu te iau, ca esti mic,/ si te cheama….”. He still remembers the ground sprinkled with molehills..  

One of the episodes little gosling recollects the most is the first time we gathered chestnuts. We took home maaaany chestnuts on that occasion. We were approaching the exit to the park, we were almost at the tram station and I was almost sorry we had not found any chestnuts on our way, when we spotted some in a tree above us. I was showing little gosling, when my husband quickly grabbed a branch and started swinging. A rain of chestnuts fell upon us! The little one started running around excitedly, gathering each and every fallen chestnut :))), amazed at how daddy had made them fall. We took all of them home and played at ordering them by size and at building shapes with them: triangle, square, circle, rectangle, diamond. Since then, the chestnuts in the park that we cross on our way to school have started falling. Every morning we look for the newly fallen ones and little gosling kicks them around running; towards the exit to the park he throws or kicks a chestnut rolling down into the lake. Every once in a while, he comes home with some chestnuts in his pocket :). 

My intention with the leaves was to press them and then play with them together, maybe draw them, playing associations and identify the tree they belonged to, start working on a herbarium..  I managed to press some of them, but most are drying along on colorful trays around the living room. I did draw them, however, and that, I discovered, was a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxing activity for myself. Quite a learning experience, also, as I was never very knowledgeable about trees, however much I enjoyed spending time outdoors. 

Nevertheless, we keep gathering leaves, from all the parks we visit… As autumn progresses, we find more colours, orange, the occasional red… The other day, he got excited with a beautiful yellow American walnut tree, playing with its leaves and fruits. He loves kicking or touching the leaves, throwing them into the water… And I enjoy watching him explore and play in and with nature.

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He has recently started to ask about birthdays and we’ve been talking about months, soo… I also made a #seasonsandmonthsoftheyearwheel, inspired by @playlearngrowwiths and @learning.the.lovely. Cutting carton, reinforcing it, gluing, drawing was so absorbing and relaxing! Great activity for both mommy and kid ! I’m no artist, but little gosling gets the images, which is what matter. I was a bit taken aback when little gosling pointed to my November and took my pumpkin for a clementine , but hey! I just found out his big blue eyed animal friend I’ve been calling an owl for the past 6 months is actually a penguin!!! We learn together! Both wheels are now proudly embellishing our fruit bowls in the kitchen. And a weather wheel is in the making

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Just around the corner from our place and right in front of our local supermarket, there were works to widen and replace parts of the sidewalk. An excavator was busy there for many days. Little gosling impatiently ran towards the site and could spend more than an hour watching the excavator move around and the workers replacing the stones and all the action. He was fascinated by the different scoops the excavator changed throughout the day; they all lied around the road. Although we kept a safe distance, when the excavator started moving, little gosling would hide behind me or pull me away saying “bebe scared” or asking “pick up bebe”. It was so comforting knowing he felt safe in my arms… I  kept reassuring him ew were safe at that distance and he was safe in mommy’s arms and explained the importance of not going too close. Sometimes a blue dump truck would come by to drop more equipment and material and load debris. And we’d watch and watch the excavator unload and load again. Aaaand, once we were lucky enough to even catch the cement mixer (“cemen mixter”) on the site. Little gosling was soo so so excited :)))). Weeks after the works concluded, he still talked about the excavator and cement mixer adn was looking around, hoping to catch a glimpse of them.  

Further down the road, on another construction site which saw little action during lockdown, he saw his first crane truck. It had come to pick up the two big green containers that housed the staff offices. We spent 45 minutes watching it in action, hooking, loading and securing the two containers on the huge platform of a big truck. He was so excited to go back home to daddy and tell him what he had seen (“crane truck pick up g(r)een containe(r)s loaded t(r)uck!). That was three months ago and we still talk about it! 

Finally, there were works ongoing to recondition the tracks, alleys and green space in one of our favourite parks. There was a big excavator and a small one on the site. We only saw them resting as we went to the park after working hours and that was always a source of disappointment. He spent a long time clinging to the fence around the excavators observing them and talking about them. He didn’t want to lose sight of them, so we always stayed close to them in the park. And we always made sure to say “goodbye excavator” when leaving the park. 

All this led to a resurgence of his interest for “Goodnight, goodnight construction site”. That is one book that always features on our core reading list. We also read “Little excavator” and spent an enormous amount of time with the building site page in one of our search and find books. Sometimes, we did them all at once: little gosling showing me the rigs in the search and find books (by now, he knows all the little details) and mommy reading “Goodnight, goodnight construction site”. 

His grandparents (construction engineers) were more than happy to indulge his passion with a toy excavator (sent all the way from Romania to Belgium during lockdown), all complete with a screwdriver (“șubeliță” from the Romanian “șurubelniță”) to dismantle and put it back together. He was thrilled! He takes it to the park and the sand pit and he is the only one who can play with it or touch it. There is no sharing the excavator, although he can agree to share the dump truck. Grannies were so convinced by the success of the excavator that they had the rest of the rigs sent over: dump truck, steam roller, cement mixer and bulldozer :P. 

I wonder how this fascination will further develop… He plays with crane trucks and dump trucks at school and excitedly tells us about it. We’re always on the lookout for cement mixers on the street aaaand on our first trip to the beach this summer, the excavator joined us :). Of course! 

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Little gosling likes leaving through the “Tessa book”. It’s the first book we have where a grandparent plays such an important part. With all his grannies away, even if he sees them often via video chat, I find it important that he understands what a guiding, loving presence they are. He identifies Tessa’s grandad with his “bobo” and likes seeing Tessa play on a mat on the ground like he does. He is full of wonder at the sight of the two full two page illustrations of the ocean and rainforest. “Woooow! Fiiiish!!” he goes at the first one; I feel the same when seeing the shoals of fish swirling. And the rainforest is so tall and there are so many different monkeys and parrots everywhere and his favourite, a leopard sleeping on a branch of the tree.

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When little gosling turned one, I was determined to have him fall asleep without the breast; and for three-four months he did. He would breastfeed in an upright position and I made sure he would not linger on just suckling; only then we switched off the light, I hugged him, patted him gently on his back and said goodbye to all things in our garden, one by one, starting with the sun (“goodnight sun, who left on the other side of the planet”), moon, stars, sky, clouds, wind, trees, all the plants and all the little bugs and animals (bees, butterflies, lizards, mice), kind of what the book does. It worked, until he started going to the nursery and I went back to nursing him to sleep. 

He’s grown immediately fond of this book and he finishes my sentences by now. It is our unspoken signal for “now it’s time to sleep”. It only works at nighttime; we have different signals for the afternoon nap :P. It has become a ritual. After his bath, we let him choose 2-3 books that he wants to read, plus the “moon book”, as he calls it. He knows reading it means he has to go to sleep. Sometimes he tries to stall and runs to the book bin to bring additional books; but we start reading the moon book and he gets it. Other times, he just says “read moon book”, even if we haven’t yet read all the selected books, and we know he wants to go to sleep. 

Right on the first page, there is a telephone (“tăfon”), one of little gosling’s favourite words right now, so that one always causes a bit of excitement, together with the red balloon. He had a purple balloon (today it finally succumbed under his teeth :))), that he liked pointing to. He lingers on the picture of the cow jumping over the moon, that he recognised from one of his favourite rhymes. For a while he was fascinated by the little toy house and by its illuminated windows. 

I have a longer version, which includes describing all the objects in the room, which I do when he’s not that into sleeping yet. And he has a very short version, in which he very quickly leaves through the book, uninterested in reading it, up to the last page. There he stops and hushes us, “shhh!”, the bunny is asleep in his bed, the kittens are asleep in the rocking chair and the lamp is off. He closes the book, gets under covers, asking for “tzitzi” and saying “pa pa, daddy”.

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We showered little gosling with kisses when he woke up in the morning between us. “Do you know what day is today?” I asked and he replied with a smile on his face “cake!” Indeed, the promised highlight of the day had stuck with him :))). He joined his dad in the kitchen whilst he was making the cake (to the great exasperation of the cook who at a certain point vowed that would be the last time he would make cake with little gosling around). That’s because little gosling loves the kitchen robot and is very possessive of it, could play with it, fill it with anything and everything, from lego blocks to socks, stuffed animals, water or paper, all day long. So, a bit challenging for dad to keep his little hands away from the batter. 

We read a lot, “hanged out” with his grandparents and walked in the park near our home (more like a run and hop, though), after hours of trying to get him outside. He wore his favourite t-shirt, the kaki “cool little boy t-shirt”, which we wash continuously. We contemplated the red tulips mommy bought after little gosling insisted “buy flowers”, to replace the ones that had died without opening up, and observed enthusiastically how these ones have started to open. 

We had his favourite dish for dinner: pizzaaa!, just like the seal in our book with the polar bear. This time, we had it delivered, though; amidst the lockdown, it has become impossible to find our alternative flours and even white wheat flour is a challenge to find. Eggs we can only find close to home if we go to the supermarket before lunchtime.

The plan was to get him a balance bike for his birthday; he likes seeing kids on bikes in the park and his eyes always trace and linger on them until they disappear from sight. Unfortunately, it did not make it in time; it will reach us in the following days. We had been waiting for it for two weeks… Other things that he likes, stickers or search and find books, have been out of stock in bookshops and on all amazons in Europe for weeks now…. 

The plan was to have his first birthday party. Last year, when he turned one, we had a similar celebration among the three of us and then spent a long weekend in a lively family resort in the Drakensberg mountains, in South Africa, where he took his first hikes on daddy’s back. Had it not been for the pandemic, he would have had a celebration and a cake at school, too. He actually remembered his colleagues yesterday, asking “school closed?” and talking about “kids school” melancholically; “bebe sad school closed”.. Oufff….. And, we were planning to spend the weekend in the Netherlands, biking among the tulip fields and the dunes on the beach… Maybe next year.

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I don’t know how much little gosling gets from our “I love you”’s, but he gets that both bear and cub are happy. He also relates to the images and recognises in them things that we do together: He giggled with delight when he saw the bear carrying the cub on its shoulders; just how his daddy carried him on his shoulders when we went to the park and he got tired. The same with mommy doing “the horsie” for him or bathtime with daddy when he gets to splash and play around in the bathtub. I gently encouraged his imagination for some of the images – for the one in which the bears lie down and look at the skies above, I told him it’s just like when he’s breastfeeding to sleep at night.

Our favourite so far is the image of the bears touching noses. His look when we got to that page was precious: full of surprise and excitement. We had seen this before in other stories with animals and I had told him that is the way animals kiss. I asked him “do you want to do that?”. He lightened up, and with eyes wide open and a huge smile said “yeeeees”. And he came close to me with his cute, soft, little nose and we touched noses gently two-three times. He ran afterwards and did the same with daddy and so two-three more times back and forth. So heartwarming!

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I did not know this was from a kids TV show; got it because it was suggested by amazon and had chicks and an egg and it looked Easter-y. I can very well imagine little gosling becoming glued to the TV, should he ever catch a glimpse of the show :))).

The three friends come across an egg whilst playing and set out to find its parents before it hatches. Little gosling now wants to play chase, just like Mossy, everytime we go to the park; he starts running saying “catch you” :))) and off he goes, giggling and laughing. He also loves to “wheeee” with them when they slide down the slopes. He loves slides and this is the closest he’s got to one in more than four weeks now. It’s a fun little story for the youngest ones, full of play and interjections and lots of sweetness between the three friends.

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I bought 1 kg of small wrapped chocolate eggs and a little Easter basket (little gosling chose the model) on my last visit to a hypermarket to buy nappies in bulk. However, the kilo of chocolate was intended to be enjoyed by mom and dad. Little gosling is still on a no sugar diet. Sooo, to compensate for that, on Saturday dad and little gosling prepared all the necessary to make home-made little nut-date-cocoa balls. They made hazelnut and peanut butter; blitzed almonds, cashews and pecan nuts until dust-like; blitzed a mix of oats, cocoa and dates. Little gosling loves seeing the kitchen robot in action. All this was combined hand molded into 20 or so small balls (some of them even looked like small eggs)  and a few big energy bars that we froze for later. Before going to sleep, I quickly placed half or so of the eggs around the living room, most of them in plain sight, down on the floor (at the feet of tables and chairs, on his playmat) or at different heights on the bookshelves and shelves with CDs and TV/music equipment on the chairs, next to photo frames, on his books. I hid a couple in his toy boxes and such, but most were very easily visible. 

Sunday morning, when little gosling woke up, I handed him his basket and we went together to the living room to find the eggs. He got so excited with every find he made! He got into it immediately and started filling his basket, moving all around, giggling and squeaking and doing the sweetest sounds. We followed him and encouraged him to look here and there when he thought it was “done” and he asked for “more, more”. So when he was looking away, his dad was placing more eggs here and there. It was such a delight! We enjoyed it tremendously together with him. Couldn’t help but regret we were not in the position to do this in a garden (we don’t have one…). We did this until there was no more space for extra eggs in his basket. We stopped and offered him the “eggs made especially for him”.

Surprisingly to us, he was not interested in unwrapping the eggs he found and was happy with our home-made eggs/balls. When he got bored of the basket, we put it away, out of his sight (and by now is half way empty). Must be the effect of only eating home made sweets…

For the rest of the day, we read countless times the story of Piou-Piou and Easter bunny – which he now calls “lapa”, after its name in French (lapin de Paques) – from our search and find Easter book and played with coloring and sticking Easter-themed stickers on our first coloring book. Plenty of lambs, hen, chicks, bells, eggs, butterflies, flowers and puffy little clouds. Precision was not important at this stage :))). We were aiming to learn about Easter motives and have some fun. And he enjoyed it. 

Since it was a novelty to us parents as well, we prepared in advance and got some really nice books. I’m happy I took them out some weeks ago instead of keeping them for an Easter basket. This way, we had time to get into the story of the Easter bunny progressively and naturally and little gosling understood what was happening. 

The “Cherche et trouve – Paques” from Editions Ballon, the story with Piou Piou helping the Easter bunny prepare this year’s egg hunt was really the backbone of our whole effort. Little gosling loves it and we read it over and over again. He stopped searching and finding and now concentrates on the story. He likes the ending; when the Easter bunny thanks Piou-Piou for his help, he says the sweetest “merci, Piou-Piou!”  

We got the lift-the-flap “We’re going on an egg hunt”, illustrated by Laura Hughes, Four bunnies go on an egg hunt around the farm, lifting logs, looking behind bushes and leaves and among flowers to find their eggs. In a moment of suspense they are fooled by a giant egg, behind which a wolf is hiding, and a chase ensues ending with the wolf getting a door slammed in its face. It’s playful and has a happy ending. Possibly little gosling’s favourite is the baby bunny enjoying his egg under the table together with a little duckling on the last page. A sweet image! It took a couple of readings for little gosling to get excited about it, but in the end he was playing with it happily. 

“The Story of the Easter bunny” by Katherine Tegen explains the origin of the Easter bunny (who is white, immortal and lived in a timeless village:)), who took over the craft of weaving the baskets, colouring the eggs, making the chocolate eggs, preparing the baskets and delivering them to kids from an old pair and expanded it. This is one book we’ll enjoy for some years still and I find it useful to give an explanation when the time for questions comes. Actually, I like the story myself. It’s sweet and generous and so caring. 

I found the story of the Easter bunny bringing kids chocolate eggs a simple and fun introduction to the Easter holiday for a young kid. We’ll do the religious story later. It was a wonderful occasion to do things together that he could understand, participate in and enjoy. We’ll continue celebrations over the Orthodox Easter, gastronomically. 

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We go through it observing every detail. The first two pages, with the savannah in the sunrise (?), are mesmerising: the small hippo ears coming out of the tall grass, the two monkeys hugging up in the tree, the bugs climbing up the grass stalks. One time when we went through the different dances the animals do, we took advantage to play music to little gosling; he was swaying to the waltz and even now keeps counting to himself: 1-2-cha-cha-cha. He’s sad when Gerald leaves the dance sad and alone… ohhhh… loves it when the cricket comes in (“cri cri” becomes “chi chi”) and is intrigued by Gerald closing the eyes to listen to the sounds of nature or being ecstatic when he realises he can dance. A very enjoyable reading over and over and over again and many opportunities to learn about animals, music, emotions.

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