"Woof" and other things

Slightly interesting things that have happened recently:

1) Farmboy is talking! His vocabulary is now up to: "Up!", "Dad!", "Woof!", "tug", and he does sound effects ("Rrraaagghhh!" for living things, and "Rmmm rmmm rmm" for vehicles). Oh, and "Sssssh!" to shush the cats out of the kitchen. And he says "Mum-mum-mum-mum", but I'm not sure if that's a sound effect or a word. And he says "Nyang nyang" for breastfeeding, but he's said that since he was about 6 months old.

2) Jim can catch a frisbee. He's been chasing and grabbing them for a while now, once he realised life isn't all about the ball, but just lately he's started getting some serious airtime and usually beats Muddy to the prize.

3) Tom's metaphorical balls have dropped. Overnight he went from that incredibly annoying shrill little yapping to a deep, resounding macho bark. The first time I heard it I had to look twice, it was so unusual for him. Little Tommy is all grown up now.

4) Bill can do a serpentine. I started our yearly agility training on Wednesday, motivated by the sheer terror of having entered the Royal Show again (why? why? why?). Bill hasn't forgotten much. Wednesday we worked on him not biting me so much when excited, Thursday I rested and applied antiseptic, and yesterday we did a serpentine and some weaving. I wish I had proper weave poles. The serpentine was cool, he got the hang of it very quickly, but I still can't figure out what I'm doing. Half the time I was using the near-side arm up and down, the other half I was doing the evil-arm thing. The near-side arm seems much more natural, but then I can see how using it for turns away can lead to that random flipping out thing dogs do on straight lines, if their handler starts to wave their arm at all. I'm quite prone to random arm waving, especially when trying to run. I've also just realised that I entered Bill in Open Agility, and he doesn't do a seesaw. We have one (thanks to Jules) that just needs a little TLC, but I'm not sure if I should risk ruining Bill's dogwalk by introducing the SS now. I know it will freak the hell out of him, and we don't have a real dogwalk, so I'm worried that he will assume anything with a long upramp is a seesaw, and bail. Maybe I should just run around the SS in the trial.

5) Still no puppies. That's not at all interesting, just really frustrating,