Care bears on the Ark

My nephew turned one just two weeks ago. He's truly an exceptional child and I'm not just saying that because I'm his aunt or because most of the relatives say he reminds them of me. He has a vocabulary that would astound you. He says the regular Hi, Mama, Dada, no (no, no, no, no), yeah, kind of stuff ~ but he also says tank ooh, baby (or bayBEE or BAYbee as there are several different meanings for this word), buh-bye, oof-oof, mao-mao, brown bear (the kid's an Eric Carle fan!), baa (bath, not the sound a sheep makes, thats ba ba), boo (book) and I'm sure there's other stuff that I'm forgetting.

I couldn't be at his first birthday party since he lives on the other side of the country, but I did leave his birthday present when I visiting for Christmas. I got him the Fisher Price Little People Noah's Ark. Now I could go on and on about how different Little People are since my childhood ~ beginning with the not-s-much-a-chocking-hazard aspect ~ but I won't get into it. My nephew loves the 'raffes and the lions (he roars). He keeps asking my sister what sound the giraffes make and she bluffs "munch munch" or "nibble nibble", but he won't have any of it. You're not pulling that kind of crap over on a guy whose "baba" (what he calls all his grandparents) taught him the actual sound a zebra makes. Yes, that would be my father. Apparently, if you ever watch documentaries on wildabeasts (which I apparently can't even spell!!) you would hear lots of zebra noises. Um, okay.

His birthday cake was decorated with two little care bears which match nicely with the little animals from the ark, so there they reside. It's become quite the topic of conversation between the adults in the family. Consider, for example, if the care bears were to have survived the great flood, there would have needed to have been two of them aboard Noah's ark, right? I mean, you can argue the historical accuracy of care bears on the ark, but you can't even definitively prove the historical accuracy of the ark itself. So it's really a toss up! If my nephew stays in the state where he currently lives, he will no doubt be learning about creationism and perhaps even the ark in his biology classes. I like to think I've done my part to make that job a little more difficult for whoever attempts to cover those topics with him.