"Q" the babies: "Hockey Time"

Since nothing really exciting has happened around here recently and I haven't posted in a while, I may as well finally post about Donovan's greatest love of all...hockey. It is his passion. It is usually the first thing he talks about when he wakes up and the last thing he is doing before he goes to bed. When we are not playing hockey with him, he is watching video's of himself or other people play hockey on the computer. He plays in in our bed, he plays it in the 4 person tent we have currently pitched downstairs. He even makes his Elmo doll play it in the bath tub. He plays it with sticks and bats when his hockey sticks are not available (which is rare, we have 5). He also insists on us (and himself) wearing blues hockey apparel for at least a little time every day. He knows exactly where Tom hangs his old blues jersey and it hangs just low enough that he can snag it off the hanger and bring it out to you to tell you when you need to wear it. Tom also has a hockey hat that is almost always on someone's head, as determined by Donovan. One day Donovan spotted his own blues shirt in the hamper that he had worn the previous day and he made Tom pick it out of the dirty clothes and put it on him. That is love.

Donovan's vocabulary has really gotten a lot better within the past few weeks and he has a handful of hockey terms he now says. They include: hockey, "hockey time" (an addition in the past few days and said about 150 times a day now), stick, puck, shot, close, "missed it", my personal favorite "come on!" and goal. He will also wind up to take a shot and sometimes say "ready, set, go!" His "ready" sounds more like "wow-ee" but he pauses at all the appropriate times. I have no idea where he learned "ready, set, go" so just add it to the list of things he knows that I have no idea where they came from. Donovan has also picked up on the fact that I sometimes call his daddy "Tom" so he does too sometimes. Today, Tom worked from home so when Donovan and I went downstairs to play and he realized his daddy wasn't there he went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up, "Tooooom! Hockey tiiime!". After about 20 rounds of that Tom made it down.

Donovan has also learned from his love of hockey that he gets a lot more cooperation from people if he takes them by the hand to do or see what he wants. He usually goes up to you, says "hand" as he offers his hand to yours and then leads you to where he wants you to go. 98% of the time he leads you to a hockey stick he wants you to use. And he is very picky about which stick you use and in what position (sitting or standing) he wants you to use it in. Tom has a full sized wooden stick "Daddy's stick" and he is not allowed to sit during the play time. I, thankfully, am. "Mommy's stick" is a small one with a yellow foam head. By far the pansiest. Once, Jenna's boyfriend Ryan was over and made the mistake of using daddy's stick. He was promptly reprimanded. He does require me to wear one hockey glove at times, but I will take that over the short period of time he insisted either Auntie Jenna or daddy wear a full helmet with mask. We have traveled with the hockey sticks to many family and friends houses... one even made it to Colorado! Donovan's preferred thing to hit is a ping pong ball. He talked so much about "pucks" that I ordered 6 plastic ones from the Internet and what does he still prefer? The ping pong ball or the practice wiffle golf balls. He will use whatever is available. Things that have served as a "puck" in the past include: an empty tack case, broken measuring tape container, roll of tape, small bottle of moisturizer, beer bottle cap and a penny.

He can recognize the Blues logo and Tom will spell "Hockey" out on the bathroom tub wall during baths and ask Donovan what it says and he replies "hockey". That is his knee-jerk word, but we still pretend it is because he can read. There is a girl with ice skates on in one of his books and he points to her every time and says "hockey". He talks a lot about watching it on the tv but watching the big boys never really holds his attention. He prefers to watch home videos of himself playing hockey or watch videos of little squirts playing hockey on the computer. I think the big boys are too fast for him to keep up. Anyways, on to the pictures. These are pics from the past couple months, all hockey related of course.

The first time he found and insisted on putting on his daddy's old blues jersey. He was so proud he had to get on the train table to show it off better.