The boy is developing an ear for music. Or, for singing and being sung to at least. It’s been quite neat to see develop over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, his favourite songs seem to be “typical” children’s songs … despite our ongoing efforts. His current favourite seems to be “Sing” from Sesame Street (you know, “Sing, sing a song, sing it loud, sing it strong!”). He also likes “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. He can get through most of the chorus to “My Bonnie (Lies Over the Ocean)”. And, um, he’s been singing the hook to “Wild, Wild West”. As far as I can tell, the Wil Smith version. I’m not sure where he picked that up.

I think we’ve been pretty good at exposing him to a wide range of music. Both Gwen & I have reasonably varied musical tastes, and we’ve always played music around him. Certainly for dancing he seems to prefer The Black Eyed Peas. But for singing, it seems like he prefers the old standards.

We’ve bought (honest-to-goodness CDs!) several “parent-friendly” albums that he doesn’t seem to mind, but have yet to make a big impression on him. He like the music videos to “Mother Goose Rocks!“, and I’ve heard him singing the Eminen-stylized “Monkeys Jumping on the Bed”, and I think this album has the best chance of being adopted by him. We have the album “Ablum” by local group “Duplex“. Recently we received “For The Kids” and “For The Kids Too!”, compilation albums by Nettwerk in support of children’s charities with songs by Sarah McLaughlan, The Barenaked Ladies, Sarah Harmer, Six Pence None The Richer, Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida, and others.

Even moving away from children’s songs, he gets exposed to lots of stuff. Mostly brit pop and alternative rock, but every night he goes to sleep to a mix of classical music (thanks Apple). So I think we’ve set a pretty good table for him — it’ll be interested to see what he eats.

Yesterday, after putting him to bed and then going back in to “deal” with him an hour later he asked to be sung to. Heart warming for certain, but those who know me know that I might have an ear for music, and reasonable rhythm (seriously!), my vocal skills are just about sufficient to get raucous laughter if I ever got the nerve to do karaoke. Anyway, I’ve been singing to him regardless and hopefully it’s not a sign he’s tone deaf. We went through a a few of the standards and he sang along with a few. Miracles of miracles, I didn’t hear a peep out of him afterwards.

Anyone out there have suggestions for music that both he and us will appreciate?

Stop looking at your calendar. Maybe that should read “Victoria Day-trip”.

Gwen’s mother is still in town and on Thursday, we decided not to go to Creston (for a variety of reasons) as originally planned, and instead we decided on a (shorter!) day trip to Victoria.

So, we headed down to Tsawwasssen and grabbed the 9am ferry.

While waiting in line, I of course grabbed a micro cache hidden on the corner of the concession building, thus setting the scene for part of our time in Victoria.

Aidan was pretty, erm, active on the ferry. He wasn’t willing to stay in one place, and so the ride resulted in Gwen and I taking turns chasing the boy around the ferry. Up the stairs. Down the stairs. Into the play area. Back outside. Good thing the ferry trip is only an hour and a half.

After landing in Sidney we drove down to Beacon Hill Park in Victoria and used it as our base of operations. We walked back into the Inner Harbour and saw some of the sites.

On our way back from the Inner Harbour, we went into geocaching mode. We picked up two relatively easy virtual caches after being stymied at a few others which were a) too heavily muggled, or b) apparently in a derelict building, or c) being watered by sprinklers that must have been running for hours judging by the puddles where the cache must have been. We also looked for a third virtual cache that was supposedly a statue in a park beside the Royal BC Museum — but we couldn’t find the statue. You read that right. We had coordinates, we had a description. And we couldn’t find the statue. I swear it must be missing, but we couldn’t even find a spot where the statue should have been! (Update: turns out we had the right coordinates for the wrong cache … that is, I was reading the description for the “Crows greet the Governor of Nootka” virtual cache instead of the “Crows in the Square” virtual cache).

We walked back up to Beacon Hill Park and attempted another cache there, but didn’t find that one either (the boy was starting to crank by this point).

Changing pace, we took Aidan into the petting zoo at Beacon Hill. Oh, what a good idea. This turned his mood right around. The only thing they had that were pettable were goats, but that was fine. They had lots of goats. The aviary was also a big hit, but of course, you couldn’t touch the birds.

[MEDIA=1]After leaving the petting zoo, we did a bit of a driving tour around Ogden Point, and then redeemed ourselves by picking up three caches in Holland Point Park. The caches themselves weren’t too hard to grab, but at least two of them were too near drunk (and, um, naked) vagrants for particular comfort. We picked up a neat travel bug (a fairy) whose 6 year old owner has already emailed me gratitude for mentioning I was going to use some magic glue to put her wings back on. We haven’t decided if we’ll leave her here in a TB hotel or send her east with Gwen’s mother (who isn’t really a geocacher).Ferry service being what it is, we had either the 7pm or the 9pm ferries to target (there’s no 8pm). Just outside of Sidney, the ferry status sign advised that it was only 28% full (at 6pm) so we decided that rather than deal with trying to grab supper on the ferry, we’d pop into Sidney and get something from a fine fast food establishment. Gwen chose KFC, and so we pulled into the parking lot. Time was somewhere around 6:05pm. Gwen returned from the store at 6:38pm with the meal. Yes, 33 minutes. “Fast food” west-coast style. Apparently training cooks. We got “free” pop and cake out of it, but I don’t think it was worth it. Anyway, we were a little more than concerned we weren’t going to make the ferry, but we pulled into the waiting area with reassurances from the ticketing agent that it wasn’t going to be a problem. And, it wasn’t.The ferry ride back was uneventful. We ate in the car, and went up to the passenger deck for the remainder of the trip. Aidan played with (well, ok, around) a bunch of older kids in the play area, and we also sedated him with a Backyardigans on the iPod (thanks again Nickelodeon and Apple).

In hindsight, it was a good thing we didn’t attempt the 9-18 hour drive to Creston (9 hours pushing, 18 if you obey the double-your-travel-time -with-a-toddler rule-of-thumb) because Aidan wouldn’t have been in a cooperative mood at all. And the weather’s been pretty awful on subsequent days. Maybe sometime later in the summer.

There’s something about the West Coast that seems to drive a certain type of personality right off the deep end.

Today was our “Day Out With Thomas“. An early morning drive in threatening grey skies brought us to Squamish. There was periodic rain and blinding light; typical fare for unsettled weather in the Coastal Mountains. The excitement started with a shuttle bus ride from the parking lot to the West Coast Railway Heritage Park. Busses are typically a source of excitement, and we got to ride on this one! And, on arriving at the park, we turned it up another notch because there were Thomas and Friends posters and merchandise everywhere! It got even more exciting when the engine in question pulled up.

Whew. Good thing we had sporadic rain showers to keep us from getting over excited.

We got to ride on some old BC Rail coach cars that were pulled along behind Thomas. That part was a little disappointing. We didn’t really go anywhere, just up the rail line a little bit, onto a spur, into a rail yard, and then back again. I thought maybe they’d take us down to Porteau Cove, or maybe up towards Whistler a bit, but no dice. Aidan was strangely quiet inside the train. He seemed to like it, but the enthusiasm was a little muted. There were a few clowns wandering the aisles of the train (no not that type — real clowns: red noses, big shoes, fuzzy hair. No, it wasn’t Engineers out on a pub crawl!) and even these didn’t get much of a response. The one carrying the bird, or rather the bird itself, got some attention though.

After the big train ride, we rode on the miniature train that they have set up there. It was $2.50 per person, and even at many times that it would have been much better value and fun than the big train. It absolutely poured for the 20 minutes we tootled around on the mini-train, but Aidan seemed to enjoy that much more. The heavy rain meant that we didn’t take any photos, though. There was a little wooden train (stationary) that the kids could climb over and through and this was a hit too.

The place was quite a bit more crowded when we left, and the shuttle bus was full going back to the parking lot. It didn’t mute the renewed enthusiasm for being on the bus though!

All in all, I was impressed by the Railway Heritage Park. It was crawling with people, but I can see that we will definitely return there later this summer and take in more of the attractions. Squamish isn’t so far away, and that miniature train was pretty fun!