Shannon, Jason and Baby Thea got me a pinata for my birthday! They came camping with us (more on that later) and so we hung it up from a tree in our campsite. It was a very colourful fish. Although, we all soon learned that a fish shape is pretty hard to bash open because it is so thin. But I found a way to get the candy out 
My favourite colour is green. I always choose the green crayon, or marker or game piece because “I like green.” My Daddy’s favourite colour is blue and my Mommy’s is red. This is whether they like it or not. I have decided that these are their favourite colours and I reinforce it in my world narrative. Mom sometimes says that she likes yellow, but I disregard such intrusions into my ideal universe.
When discussing Mommy’s birthday I said, “We’ll go to the mall and get you a red present because I know that you like red.” Mom had no choice, but to agree in a resigned sort of way that, yes, she did like red.
I definitely have learned things about restaurants. I’ve even learned things that my parents didn’t know I knew…
The other day I decorated a box as a space ship. I climbed in and instead of singing Zoom Zoom Zoom, I’m Going to the Moon, I told Mom, “I’m going to MacDonald’s. What kind of food do you want? They have burgers, hot dogs, chicken, and french fries.”
[If this were a comic strip, a bubble with ?!? would have appeared above my mother's head]
For Mom’s birthday (yep she turned 3 recently too) we went to a restaurant for real. I put in my two cents about where we should go. “I want not spicy because I’m not a gorwn-up like you. I’m just a kid and I don’t really like spicy stuff yet.”
I had a nice birthday with my friend Dominic’s family and the neighbourhood kids. We had a pizza party and an ice cream cake and Mom put up balloons. Life doesn’t get much better than that.
Now that I am three, everything is about being three. For example:
“1-2-3, ’cause I’m three!”
“I can have three of them because I’m three”
“OK Anneke, just have three more bites of your dinner.”
“Three because I’m three?”
“Look at what three years olds can do that two year olds can’t do” [what follows is some death defying feat like a sommersault, climbing into the crib myself, climbing into my bed without a stool, getting on the toilet without a stool, using the toilet without the potty seat, balancing on one foot, etc.]
So we all know that my parents spend a fair bit of time on the computer. It is only natural that I would want to play too. My first favourite thing to do is to use the paint option on Daddy’s phone thingamajiggy and make colourful squiggly lines. I also like to use the keyboard to type my name. I can do it all by myself and also know how to push enter and backspace. I even know what big and little letters look like AND I can spell and type Mom and Dad. I am working on Merrick. Please just disregard the continuity problem of me typing all these blogs posts while simultaneously just learning to type 
But I think I found a third favourite thing…people’s phone thingamajiggies also have crazy songs and videos on them. Like dancing bananas and songs about grapes on a plate. How fun! – Thanks for that lesson Uncle Darryl!
Here are just a few more cute pics from my Ontario vacation.
and ice cream cake…
Oma and Opa’s cottage is on Troy Lake which is just off the Rideau System. Just down the road is Jones Falls and a set of working locks. We took Granne and Grampa Mike and Auntie Amy there.
It was pretty cool to see the boats moving up and down and see the workers cranking the gears by hand to open the doors.
There was a family of geese there too.
At the cottage we found some fishing gear and Dad and I decided to try it out. So we got some leftover chicken scraps for bait and headed down to the dock. Mom was pretty dubious and was already seeding the conversation with comments about how the fish don’t always bite and that fishing takes a long time. Well, wasn’t she surprised when Dad caught a fish right on the first cast! I asked if we were going to fry it in a pan. But Mom and Dad explained that this fish was a sunfish and not good for eating. So Dad carefully took the hook out (it wasn’t lodged too deeply) and tossed it back in the water. This was quite an experience for Dad too!
Totally ecstatic we cast again and ended up catching two more fish – and several lilly pads. The next day I wanted to try it again. Fishing is awesome! Here we are with our catch.
There were a bunch of kids books at the cottage and I really liked one about the Grinch. I’d never heard of him before, but apparently this book wasn’t his headliner about stealing Christmas. This book told the story of how Max, the dog, and the Grinch became friends. So every night for about 10 days or so Mom or Dad would read this book.
Then one night Mom and Dad heard me talking in the bedroom – to their astonishment, I was ‘reading’ the Grinch book pretty much word for word. When Auntie Amy came to visit I agreed to read it to her.