Walking & Talking

Toby followed his birthday up with a dramatic developmental growth spurt.  This was combined with a string of big adventures that took him from the mountains of Utah to the (former) swamps of our nation’s capital and back to the lakes of Michigan.  Forgive the textiness of the beginning; I decided they were stories that needed to be told, and maybe better without images anyway.

On the Monday after the 1^st birthday, Matt headed down to Indiana Dunes for a cool plant identification workshop.  This was a fantastic professional development opportunity for him, but because it overlapped with my conference it meant spending 10 days away from Toby.  This was by far their longest separation, and a bummer.  We consoled ourselves with phone calls and Skype, although with both methods Toby’s main objective was obtaining/besmearing the technology.  We look forward to when Toby can interact with the person instead of just teething on the keys.  In the meantime, I worked hard to get my talk ready for the upcoming conference, handle Toby, and take care of Violet, who we realized had all the symptoms of a UTI the day before Matt left. 

When it rains, it pours.  Monday evening I picked up Toby from daycare and we took Viles to the vet.  I think the vet techs thought I was crazy to let him chew on my credit cards, but I was willing to give him ANYTHING to keep him from licking the floors.  Violet weighed her desire to hide in my lap and her wish to not have her tail pulled, and opted to hide under a chair in the corner instead.  I wished I had eight arms.  An hour later, the kitty had an antibiotic shot and we headed home with some optimism.  Early the next morning, Tresha called to say she was closing daycare for the day – her daughter Lyren had been throwing up for hours.  (Subtle foreshadowing: Lyren loves kissing babies.)  Joelyn saved the day by taking Toby last-minute so I could work on my talk. 

Daycare was open again Wednesday, I figured out how to wring a story out of my unexpectedly complicated data, and Noni arrived Wednesday night to help us get ready for a very early Friday departure.  Toby’s Thursday morning routine checkup went well.  He got a heap of vaccinations which the doctor assured us wouldn’t cause any problems for traveling.  We got everything packed and went to bed early.  Friday morning started well… and then, ten minutes before we were supposed to get in the car, Toby threw up.  This was no dainty spit-up.  Thank goodness mom was there – she thought to grab a couple of towels, and she sat next to Toby on the car ride. 

The trip was surprisingly pleasant, given the vomit.  In the car.  In the airport shuttle.  On the plane, and then the next plane, and finally the shuttle to Snowbird, the ski resort where the conference was held.  When he wasn’t throwing up or sleeping (he did a great deal of the latter), Toby was fairly cheery.  In fact, I was convinced he was feeling better, and let him taste my strawberry smoothie at the Salt Lake City airport.  He liked it, and was motivated to learn how to use a straw more effectively than I would have believed.  This made the last episode of sickness by far the most dramatic.  I would have felt bad about it normally, but I wasn’t impressed with the quality of the car seat the shuttle service provided or their inability to either install it themselves or provide me with the necessary literature.  All three of us walked away feeling fine.

The ongoing discussion with Noni about whether Toby’s ailments had been due to a virus or a reaction to the vaccines was settled when we both fell ill three days later, right on schedule.  Mom lay on the couch, I lay on the floor, Toby bounced off the walls.  We survived with the help of Dr. Noni’s arsenal of travel medications, and after the one day of real misery our only regret was the prolonged dip in appetite preventing us from eating the amazing ice cream purchased the night before we were struck down.  We even found the energy to pop Toby in the stroller and take him for a walk through the beautiful landscape at Snowbird a couple of times.  Toby also enjoyed charming conference attendees, digging in to his first breakfast buffet, and discovering how to operate the dials on the breast pump (turning up the vacuum, yikes!) 

The camera didn’t come along, but maybe eventually I’ll get that picture of the mama and baby moose napping under our porch that Mom took while I was in meetings and lil’ T was asleep.  Personally, all I saw was famous scientists.  In lieu of mountain pictures, here’s the best slide from my presentation and one of the 3-4 coolest results of my dissertation: it pays to have short stamens when pollinators are abundant.  (Hopefully the additional analyses currently underway supports this.)

A million thanks to Noni for seeing us through this trip.  Toby was getting so cocky on his feet, and friskily practicing stairs in our hotel loft, that she was seriously concerned he would take his first step with her instead of Matt and me.  No worries!  He waited until we were home, and twice took a step between the futon and the coffee table on June 28^th.  Matt and I were both right there.  Thrilling!  A few days later we were in Ligonier, PA for the annual Schultz July 4^th extravaganza, and Toby took three steps in pursuit of Aunt Becky’s iPhone (she was generous enough to let him play with it.)  Now he can toddle all the way across the living room.  Very precarious, very cute.   He still refuses to have his hands held while he walks – he’s never let us help him along in that way.  I’m curious whether this form of independence will turn out to be a consistent part of his personality.

He decided to start talking more at MommaSue and Grandpa Fred’s house – he took quite a liking to their brown lab, Argo, and enthusiastically called her “dog!”  Okay, maybe it sounded more like “dur,” and maybe he says that noise A LOT, but he especially said it to her.  He also likes to combine it with “ah,” enabling us to make a whole slew of new Toby jokes.  What’s Toby’s favorite key signature?  A-flat (A dur, in the traditional German).  What’s Toby’s favorite way to enter a room?  A door.  Fun, fun, fun.

He also started saying “mama” quite clearly, and tries entertaining and ever-more-accurate approximations of “kitty” (mostly “iddy”, sometimes whispered “keh -IDDY”) and “daddy.”  Those three words will probably have to tie for his first.  "Star" recently joined the ranks.  His babbling has generally gotten more diverse, with inflection and facial expressions.  We are inspired by the feeling that he really understands and wants to communicate, and are working with him on his favorite things with renewed vigor.  Be on the lookout for on/off, open/close, light, button, and fan to enter the vocabulary.  Hooray!  In the meantime, he’s also investing in body-language communication.  He waved goodbye to Daddy on 7/11 and started pointing at things he wants (or places he wants to be carried).  So even if the words come slowly, Tobers lets us know what’s up.

He continues to be an adventurous eater, including his first bacon stick (a Schultz tradition) and crab cakes on the 4^th of July.  Oh yeah, and his first beer.  Uncle George would have been so proud.  (No, we didn’t actually let him have any!)   

Another new favorite activity is feeding us things off his tray, which is usually really fun.  Unless what he wants to feed you is raw tomato mashed with a blueberry scone.  He also enjoys eating things that aren’t food; mostly rocks and aborted viburnum fruits from the bush by our front door.  Some of the appeal is probably my comic attempts to extract the item from his jaws.  Sometimes he picks it up, pops it in, and then gives a big grin holding a pebble between his teeth.  Mostly he’s consistently cute about food, though – my favorite part of the week is how he insists on helping me make the Sunday morning pancakes.

After the 4^th of July in Ligonier, PA, we headed further south to meet up with Joe Bednarek (Matt’s dear friend from his Peace Corps days) and his family just outside Washington DC.  Joe and his wife Olya have a 6-month-old son, Dominic, who we were excited to introduce to Toby.  We had a lovely couple of days talking new-parenthood and hanging out with our boys. 

We headed home totally refreshed.  We only made a short stop at Noni’s house to break up the trip – Toby took the opportunity to show us that he could climb all the way up and down the stairs by himself.  Once.  After that, what’s the point?

He’s also finding other new ways of getting around, from riding rather than pushing his truck to convincing us to give him piggy-back rides.  That last one is a little hard on my back, but Daddy seems to be able to do it with no repercussions.  Pretty much any time someone he likes is sitting on the floor, they’re at risk of having him cruise around to their back, hold on to their shoulders, lean in close, and then maybe bounce a little if they’re not getting the “give me a ride!” message.  Then once the ride begins, there are usually giggles.  Since the end of a ride is a bummer, I sweeten it by sitting on him (couch) or laying on him (bed).  I know, that doesn’t sound like fun to me either, but Toby thinks it’s hysterical.  And anything that makes our little boy laugh is pretty much irresistible, even if it necessitates a visit to the chiropractor in the end. 

 

Now that summer is in full swing, our little man has been exercising his Michigan birthright by going swimming in lakes.  He cries taking a bath in a strange bathroom, but lakes are a different story.  He loves them.  His first experience in a natural bod of water was our own Gull Lake, right next to the biological station.  Joelyn came along to share this special first.  It’s a big lake with a lot of boats, so there were fairly sizeable waves, but that didn’t phase Toby.  He played in the sand, sat in the surf, and got carried out into deeper water.  A few days later he had a lake playdate with my friend Marcia’s grandson Logan, and they both learned how to climb up the toddler slide and whoosh down it into the water.  These experiences brought back a lot of fond lake and pond childhood memories for me.  I think we’ll have many joyful wet days in future summers. 

Just before this post went up, MommaSue came for another visit, perfectly timed to cover for Tresha’s daycare vacation.  Toby is scrupulous about loving all of his grandmas equally (immeasurably), so he decided to reward Matt’s mom with the same kind of joy mine experienced in her last visit – i.e., vomiting.  This illness was quite a bit worse than the June one, but I think the fact that we weren’t on an airplane equalized things.  Good job, Toby.  Somehow the grownups escaped this one.  Thanks to MommaSue for making a very sick little boy and four loads of laundry in one day seem almost like a holiday.

In other news, I’ve submitted the first draft of the first chapter of my dissertation to my advisor for editing.  Progress!  Also, the robins in the bush by our front door hatched their 3 eggs and the nestlings just fledged yesterday.  We’re thrilled they didn't get eaten like the cardinals that occupied that nest before them. 

First Birthday!

Is it really possible that an entire year has passed since our bundle of joy arrived?  With such cool weather compared to last year, I might have believed we hadn’t made it to June yet, but the inexorable growth of our almost-toddler is clear.  We’ve been through so much in the first 12 months of Toby’s life, we were happy to pause and celebrate together.

In the time leading up to the big day, we were very busy.  I was teaching my first class as lead instructor, a field-based Ecology Lab.  A wonderful experience, but time-consuming, it finished up the day after his birthday.  I was also pushing hard to get a new analysis done for a conference in late June – more on that in the next post.  Matt (the hero) picked up a lot of my slack around the house.  Including playing “open & close,” one of Toby’s favorite games.

In spite of the business, we did take time for pleasure – including Toby’s craziest playdate yet, which involved a sandbox and a water table.  Toby loved them both.  This action shot shows him getting the splashes he'd been recently handing out. 

In the middle of teaching the class, Toby and I took an exciting solo trip to Oberlin for my 10-year reunion.  I wasn’t sure about doing this by myself, but Matt had to work and I knew we could just drive the four hours home if it didn’t work out well.  So, we packed up the car and off I went.  I snuck in a visit with Christina, Eva, and Martin in Cleveland on the way there.  Toby decided to charm his ever-cuter lady-friend by showing off his sock-removing skills.  I think she was wowed. 

At Oberlin, it was wonderful to introduce the little guy to so many people and places that are special to me from my formative college years.  He enjoyed learning how to play banjo with Chad, singing with Mel, falling asleep in a stroller (for the first time) during the venerable Illumination tradition with Cat, playing with other fresh Oberlin babies, and eating falafel with Caroline.  He got his pants FILTHY with his first extensive foray into lawn-crawling.  Several of my old friends proved indispensable once again, helping me juggle a baby in a tiny dorm room on my own.  It turns out the only way to manage without Matt is to replace him with three other people.  

Falafel isn’t the only new thing Toby has been eating; with the help of his fancy new molar, he eats almost everything we do now.  At least, on adventurous days.  Those are the kinds of days when he steals my toast out of my hand or enthusiastically pops lima beans in his mouth.  There are still times when we go back to the old faithful squishies: yogurt, applesauce, and oatmeal.  Yogurt is the most reliable; plain, organic, whole-milk yogurt always seems to hit the spot.  Other than that, changeability is the rule.  There are hungry days when he’s a bottomless pit for spinach and lentil stew, and picky days when a rice cracker and a cup of yogurt is all that goes down.  Today he may turn his nose up at the peas he prized yesterday.  On the other hand, he may decide he wants to eat raw onions like apples.  Really.  I took it away once I realized he was serious.

In spite of the challenges of consistently pleasing the tot, I have found the “food is love” mantra of my childhood feeling more and more true.  I’ve started a Sunday pancake tradition, even though he can only eat one.  Every time we share a treasured recipe with him for the first time, I’m tempted to take a picture.  (We have a lot of treasured recipes).  Even though I'm sure he would be fine without it, we go out of our way to prepare homemade applesauce and send our own food along with him to daycare – because especially when he’s away from us, we want him to be surrounded by our love.  As he gets older and can enjoy more complex foods and remember the stories, we look forward to sharing more of these culinary embraces from both sides of his family.  He’s already making moves toward participating by developing his passion for cookware.  (Note my stealth-video skills, developed to outwit a camcorder-wary baby).

In the lead up to his birthday, he’d been talking a bit more, but still not very many clear sounds.  “Mama” and “Dada” definitely featured often in the babbling, and were starting to seem associated with us, but not enough to call the first word.  He did go through a brief phase of saying “Dadoooo!” which we found nearly too charming to bear.  I decided then that I was switching Matt from Daddy to Daddoo, but then Toby stopped saying it.  Bummer.  His friend Lillian at daycare calls him “Bobo” now… Bobo and Daddoo seems like the title of a hit children’s book to me.  I’m taking plot suggestions.

He did make some ambulatory progress right before his birthday, including getting off the bed all by himself for the first time on June 5^th.  We’d been working on this for weeks, ever since he threw himself off headfirst (scaring me witless yet somehow escaping without even a bruise).  Now he’s a real pro at this handy skill, also using it for couches and stairs.  Sometimes he still gets stalled halfway off the bed, with his feet dangling, and has to be encouraged to push, but he always manages.  The video is shaky because I’m also trying to be sure he doesn’t go boom – he’s so steady now I let him do it all by himself. 

He’s been cruising around pushing his fire truck quite handily as well, even making three circuits around the loop in our house with MommaSue just before he turned 1.

Celebrating Toby’s birthday was a two-step affair this year.  His actual birthday was on a Thursday, and we kept it small with just the three of us and MommaSue.  As is traditional in my family, I started the day by telling Toby about his birth.  This could have been boring to a one-year-old, but I used lots of inflection.  Matt and I headed off to work, leaving Toby and MommaSue to enjoy each other’s company.  I’d fantasized about making the little man an angel food cake for his first birthday, but there was no way I could make it happen.  Sue saw that coming, and brought everything she needed to make the cake with her from Ligonier!  That’s how she spent Toby’s birthday naptime.  This felt like a fantastic present for ME.  Joelyn and Mridul stopped by in the evening to give Toby a present – he loves the Dr. Seuss books that came in the package, but opening the box was still probably the best part.

We had a meal of macaroni with tomato sauce and peas, since those are all things Toby enjoys.  I decorated the cake and lit the candle.  Matt and Toby blew it out.  By dessert, he was so full and tired, he mostly enjoyed his piece by squishing rather than eating it.  Nobody minded.  We were all peacefully in bed before the time Toby had actually arrived the year before.

The little man has been enjoying his presents very much, even the ones he’s technically not quite developmentally ready for.

The following Sunday was Matt’s second father’s day, and we invited over all the local friends who helped us grow and thrive through our first year as parents to celebrate with strawberry shortcake in the yard.  It was our first garden party, and included a spread that I hope would make my Aunt Jean proud (it included lemonade and used her card tables and many of her dishes, so it can’t have been that far from perfection.)  Toby enjoyed himself and it felt like just the right way to mark the beginning of a year of walking and talking.

More on our more recent adventures, as well as Toby’s considerable post-birthday progress, in the next post (very soon!).  I’ll close with this sweet fawn Matt spotted while he was out at work in late May – one of those amazing moments he gets in his wonderful job.

Bouncing Baby Boy

 

Here’s the short update: Toby is awesome.  He is growing and eating, moving faster all the time.  He laughs and smiles a lot, turning his eyes into little half-moons and melting our hearts.  The long update follows.

 

The Toblerone got his first haircut shortly after the last post.  He was working on a serious mullet and I just couldn’t take it any more, so I trimmed maybe an inch off the back, plus a tiny bit from the middle of his cowlick.  No one else really noticed – including Toby; I gave him my cell phone to play with and he had no idea anything else was going on.  (This is also how we cut his fingernails, he’s a VERY focused technophile.)

At the end of last month Toby and I drove down to Richmond to visit with my side of the family.  The weekend was packed with visits, but the little fellow handled it wonderfully.  He ate everything off my plate at Nana’s – notably getting his first taste of her famous fried chicken – and even helped Uncle Dan and Uncle Kenny polish Nana’s kitchen table.

There was also a fun visit with Aunt Jean, a tour of Aunt Cathy’s livestock (Seymour Boar!  Noisy Rooster!), quality time with Grammie and Grandpa Royer, and photo ops with the cousins.  We felt quite spoiled. 

Toby’s latest language development is the glottal stop.  I had previously appreciated this as something common in other languages, like Hawaiian (or Cheyenne!).  When I looked up more about it, I discovered that’s how we do our mid-word “t” in English.  Anyway, Toby got it down on our trip south.  For about a week he would say “hah!” when he was considering crying and not sure whether to commit, but we also used it as a fun play phrase to toss back and forth.  It was obvious he recognized the coolness of this little trick the rest of us have learned to take for granted.  Now it’s old hat and he’s returned to mostly saying “mamama” and trying to walk.  Oh, but he does use his fist to make cute “bababa” sounds.

He may not say a lot of words, but we notice that he’s understanding more and more.  We watch the birdfeeder together a lot, and if he’s playing on the floor and I say “there’s a bird” he’ll look up at the feeder to see what’s visiting.  The first time it happened he looked back at me with a big grin that clearly said, “Mama, we’re having a conversation!!”  Here he is with the kitty, watching a bird that is just out of the frame.

He will also clap on request, including when it comes up in Barnyard Dance.  In fact, clapping continues to be one of his favorite things – he often claps first thing in the morning, as soon as his eyes open.  

 

Books are still a favorite thing too.  He’s getting better at turning pages, and can even handle the paper pages of Green Eggs and Ham, which he insists on having read to him daily.  It’s clear now that he recognizes things in the illustrations.  Every time we get to the kitty in I Love You Because You’re You he has to stop and pet it (this makes sense), and he also gets really excited about the bowl full of mush in Goodnight Moon (no idea what that’s about).  Sometimes, though, enjoying books is just a variation of enjoying paper.  Here he is opening his handmade penguin from our friend Raffica…

A few weeks ago Noni accompanied Toby and me on a lovely day trip to Saugatuck Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan, one of my favorite places.  Noni carried Toby up and down the dunes and was rewarded with at least three hearty bites.  Stalled on eight teeth, the tot has been resolutely working on the molars.  Sometimes this makes him a little chompy.  I managed to teach him (for the second or third time) not to bite ME, so the nursing relationship is intact.  When those teeth start to move, he can’t seem to resist.  He’s lucky to have so many forgiving women in his life.  Noni and Toby also picked up their first ticks of the year (Toby’s first ever, a dubious milestone).

Although he hasn’t taken any independent steps yet, our little dude is definitely closer to walking.  He can stand unsupported for much longer periods.  His knees and the tops of his feet have gotten rough from all the crawling.  One of our favorite games now is “chase.”  When he follows me, I go into the next room and hide behind the furniture.  He comes thumping and giggling to find me.  When I follow him, he crawls four steps, sits up, and waits for me to catch up.  Zerberts and giggles follow, and then he crawls another four steps.  I love it.  He also loves crawling to the bathroom to watch Daddy fill the tub or brush his teeth.  And he’s just gotten so bouncy lately – I suppose baby girls are bouncy too, but the alliteration is too fun.  He bounces on the bed.  He bounces in our arms.  He rocks back and forth on hands and knees, and pulls up on the furniture to bounce on two legs.  It seems like he is never still.

 

It’s probably not surprising then that he’s become noticeably less interested in being carried around.  He still asks to be picked up regularly, as if to be reassured that he can, but he wants to be put down again soon.  I took him to a science fair I was judging thinking that he would love seeing all the bright posters and interesting people, but he yelled the whole time I was visiting displays.  Once I finally put him down, he cheered up immediately and scooted straight for the soapbox car (not the nearest exhibit).  He hung out with the middle school boys without even a glance back at his mama.  They were charmed.  We should probably add “wheels” to the list of things Toby really likes.

Something else new is his deeper experience of the possibilities the kitchen has to offer.  He advanced from opening and closing doors over and over again to checking out what is behind them.  This is truly the next frontier; just yesterday he opened the tupperware cabinet all by himself and started taking things out for the first time.  Watch out kitchen cabinets everywhere.

With the warming weather, going out to play in the lawn is now one of his favorite pastimes.  He particularly likes plucking and shredding dandelion flowers, walking behind his fire truck, grubbing in the dirt, and climbing the stairs (he first did that with Matt just this Friday).  He even got to pull garlic mustard on a workday with Matt (okay, I pulled the mustard; he only ate some of it.)  The mosquitoes are horrible right now, but luckily they seem more interested in us than in Toby.  And every time we go outside I’m thankful for the new research showing that exposure to germs makes healthier kids, because I can’t imagine how I would keep him clean.

10 months, spring is here!

Even though there are lots of new things happening each week, it’s sort of a relief that Toby’s growth is moderating – I have the sense we can really savor each new stage now.  It gives me space to look back and appreciate how far we’ve come in the last ten months.  There are things that have moved so slowly that I barely noticed them – his sensitive cheeks don’t require daily lotion anymore to be charmingly rosy instead of alarmingly rashy.  Bedtime isn’t peaceful massages, rocking, and lullabies anymore; now there is a quick rubdown while he crawls around the bed, loud protesting at a new diaper and pajamas (he outgrew his sweet sleepsack), and reading at least three books before being put down.  

So, what new things are happening?  In addition to pulling up and cruising a lot more since the last entry, he started crawling with his belly off the floor, standing without any support, and yesterday he even started clapping!

His first Easter was lots of fun.  First MamaSue and Grandpa Fred came to visit, along with poor, sickly Aunt Rachael (who came back from Guatemala with a stomach bug).  We ate lots of good food, including Toby’s first asparagus and hollandaise.  This is a springtime tradition in our family, and he loved it.  He obliged the audience by showing off his eating and babbling skills – thanks to Grandpa Fred for the great video.

Toby attended a birthday party for the first time last month – his “old” friend Benjamin turned 1!  These two fellas used to drive up to campus next to each other in the womb, so they go way back.  They’re also both locomotively precocious and hair-impaired, so they have a lot to not talk about.  Because they’re too busy crawling or running.  Kids were outnumbered 2:1 at the party, and Toby had a great time playing with all the grandmothers.  He also liked the enormous cardboard boxes. 

Maybe the confidence that crawling with your belly off the floor brings is what is making him more outgoing.  He was so good at getting around with the army crawl, we weren’t sure he’d ever go to the trouble to master the traditional hands-and-knees version… but apparently it’s still worth it.  He’s faster now that he’s thumping around on four limbs.  He’s also, believe it or not, even cuter.  (As his Noni would say, you’d better put your sunglasses on.)

As his world expands, we made the difficult decision to switch from having Joelyn take care of him at our house to sending him to daycare, where he can interact with other kids.  So far, we’re encouraged to see that he seems to be really enjoying it.  One of my friends from work takes her daughter (just a few months older than Toby) to the same place, so little Lillian and Toby get to spend extra time together.  Somehow this is much harder for me that keeping him home, but I take lots of deep breaths and keep on truckin’.  I was most anxious about the switch to one nap a day, but he made the transition over a few days and now it’s completely normal.  Tresha, the daycare provider, won me over by telling me how smart Toby is – she says he likes to figure things out and can focus on a single thing much longer than the average baby. (!)  Also that he’s a sweetie, but who’s surprised?

Another, smaller, shift with our growing boy is a new bathtub.  We were tired of working so hard to keep him from flinging himself out of the sink, and then he learned how to operate the squirting rubber ducky.  That was the final straw.  The video is mild – water was going EVERYWHERE.  I went shopping for a big plastic tub we could stick in the shower.  It turned out great – all the duckies fit in nicely, too!  Bath time is now fun for everyone (not just Toby) again.   

On the downside, we had only a couple of weeks of respite from Toby’s ambitious teething schedule.  His first molars and at least one bicuspid are already on their way, and this is a whole new kind of teething pain.  He wakes up in the middle of the night crying, his naps are cut short, and he is GRUMPY.  A dose of Tylenol usually does the trick.  No sign of them actually cutting yet.  Poor baby! The last week has been quiet, but they’ll probably be back at it again soon.

Luckily he’s easily distracted during his waking hours with lots of new activities.  He’s tried his hand at climbing, although it’s not yet a regular diversion, and he’s learning how to open cabinet doors.

 

He got this cute little fire truck from our friends the Wilkes; it’s a third-generation Biological Station hand-me-down, and Toby thinks the buttons are great.  He hasn’t quite figured out how to push it around yet.  I suspect it will feature heavily in outdoor play this summer.

The piano is a perennial favorite, and now he has added playing it from the ground to the usual joys of watching (or helping) Daddy play.

But probably his most-loved pastime currently is pulling his books off the shelf.  He can do this over and over again, as many times as a grownup is willing to put them back on.  He’ll also settle for having them read to him.

  The snow finally melted here.  The crocuses are up, and Matt has switched from cutting brush to doing prescribed burns.  It’s a fun change of pace for him, and I like it when he comes home smelling like smoke.  Last week he took Toby out to experience the grass for the first time.  Tobers wasn’t quite sure what to think.

 

Since then, he’s warmed up to the idea, and enjoys crawling around after the neighbors’ collie and trying to eat things he shouldn’t.  We’re looking forward to taking him birding soon.  This afternoon MamaSue and I warmed him up with his first wildflower hike, at the Kalamazoo Nature Center.

 

There are a few birds we can see from our window, including the annual wood-duck pair looking (in vain) for a nest site in the trees.  Ducks perched on tree branches?  Yes.