The Manta Rays

Vincent is very interested in ocean stuff. I'm not really sure how it started - when we lived in Minnesota, we had annual passes to the Minnesota Zoo. He used to love the aquarium wing and the coral reef section of the tropics. He loves to watch documentaries about underwater creatures. He gets very excited about visits to the Sydney Aquarium and Manly Sealife Sanctuary - in fact, since we got our annual pass about a month ago that gives us unlimited entry to these two attractions and 9 other places, we have already been to the aquarium twice and the sanctuary once (and are planning a second visit on Monday!)

Vincent LOVES going to the Sydney Aquarium!

Wales, sharks, and rays are his favourite - he knows all of the different types of these animals and is always asking questions to learn more. We hunt out the shark and whale books at the library to bring home. I also printed out some fact sheets and photos of sharks and whales and had them laminated.

And he likes to do this pretend-play activity that he made up call "playing oceans." He assigns each of us an animal (all of the fun is in the planning - we never actually play anything....) It goes something like this:

Vincent: "Let's play oceans. Daddy, you can be the tiger shark. Mama, what do you want to be? You can be a dugong. And Desmond can be the baby tiger shark. And I'll be the big brother tiger shark."

Less than five minutes later, we are all different animals...minke whales, lemon sharks, sting rays, manta rays, blue whales, northern right whales...the list goes on and on and on.

For his birthday in April, I made him a shark pencil case from this great pattern from mooglyblog.com (by the way - I LOVE this site for free crochet patters. Plus, she lives in Iowa!) He loves it. So I decided that I needed to make him another underwater animal, and I came across this very cute pattern for a manta ray. And, I have learned that if I make something for Vincent, I need to make one for Desmond as well. So I made two manta rays.

Desmond's manta ray is purple and Vincent's is black.

The pattern is pretty quick to crochet. Plus the safety eyes add a extra-cuteness to the animal. And it has this really great feature of using pipe cleaners in the tail and across the fins so that you can bend the ray in different ways. Of course, the pipe cleaners in my boys' rays snapped after a few twists of the tail. But they are still cute! Both boys loves their manta rays!

(That green sweater that Vincent is wearing was made by my grandma for me to wear when I was his age!)

I am now moving on to some other projects - baby gifts and birthday gifts and a granny square project that will be donated to the fund-raising raffle for the Relay for Life at the boys' daycare. But I am hoping that I might have some time in the next few months to attempt this amazing humpback whale for Vincent.