More skills!

There's carrying the truck like a small briefcase into the kitchen and back to the front door. There's also dancing to Hannah Montana, unfortunately.

Just another Tuesday morning

 Maceo and I drove downtown with Kate, as she was going to a fancy work shindig and Maceo and I were going to the Zoo! We parked the car at Macpherson Square, ditched Kate, and began the adventure. First off, walking along K st NW in the morning, there are, as Maceo can tell you, an inordinate amount of busses and trucks. This does not mean that Maceo didn't try to count them, though ordinal numbers are beyond his ken. He points out every truck and bus he can hear/see and asks you, "Unh?" It's pretty much his favorite thing. Once we got to Farragut North, we took the metro to Woodley Park and walked up Connecticut Ave, pointing out large vehicles en route. We arrived at the Zoo at a little before 9. Buildings don't open till 10, so we walked through a pretty much empty Zoo. We stopped to see the cheetahs, but couldn't find them. We did find the panda. Maceo stared intently.

Next up were the flamingoes. Maceo liked them because they made noise and they were right up next to the cage and therefore rather easy to see.

Down the path were the giant rheas, which I thought were emus. They walked towards us, which Maceo found interesting, but they didn't come very close, so we moved on.

Once we got to the bottom of the park, we went to the petting zoo and then the giant pizza. Maceo very much enjoyed the pizza, though he was frightened and bemused by the model cow that mooed when a button was pushed.

He's our little pimento. 

The walk back to Mt Pleasant knocked him out, and so he was asleep when we got on the glorious bus, but he soon woke and enjoyed watching through the windshield and grabbing for the call for a stop wire, and smacking any flat object within reach.

Once home, and after a lunch, he was out for a nap. When he woke up, he and Tupelo and I lolled on the bed for about half an hour. Tupes was very patient and Maceo was very pleased.

"I love you, man."

Finally, the next day, we watched some of the Spain-Portugal soccer game in the European Championships. While Maceo has been cheering on the Italians, he found this game quite entertaining, too.

Milestones

Recent new skills of Maceo's, in no particular order:

1) Walking up stairs one step at a time, provided you hold both hands and he can lean back to a 70 degree angle.
2) Waving bye bye while sounding like a European ambulance--"Anh Unh, Anh Unh."
3) Raising the roof.
4) Climbing down the ladder at the pool (maximum of one rung--the top one).
5) Climbing all the way into his high chair.
6) Climbing up onto sofas and chairs.
7) Climbing onto his stroller (but not into it) and then doing violent squats to get it to move around.
8) Finding my computer's mouse when I don't think to put it out of reach and bringing it to me.
9) Identifying busses's motors immediately and then looking around to find them.
10) At bed time, if, during reading time, Kate asks him if he's ready to go to sleep, immediately turning and cuddling right up.

PS-- And he likes sticks all of a sudden. Here he is exploring treasure in the playground across from our street after a recent violent storm.

Maceo's gettin' active!

So, if you've been following our stellar blog and the "regular" postings, you'll know that Maceo is moving from crawling to walking. He's probably at about a 10% to 90% ratio of crawling/walking. But he's still a drunk little monkey on his feet. For example, when I went to pick him up from daycare on my bicycle last Thursday, I learned that he had fallen on the blacktop at playground time and scraped his forehead and nose.

It didn't seem to slow him down at all or bother him, and it is nearly entirely healed now. But he does fall a lot.

He's getting better, though, and it's fun to see. Tonight, I got him home from daycare (I drove, because it was a million degrees in DC), and when we got home, we discovered some diaper rash. We let him run around upstairs with nothing on his lower parts (which was a mistake, three times, if you know what I mean), and he and I played, for the first time, tag/chasing/hide and go seek. I would make eye contact with him and distract him from the fan on the floor he likes to pick up, and then I would run to some part of the upstairs--the bathroom or into our bedroom or into the guest room. He would come staggering in and see me and kind of turn around by walking a one footed circle around his pivot leg and stagger out, with me jogging almost in place behind him to chase him and soon tickle him. This played out three or four times and was fun and cute. Plus, it maybe tired him out a little, and we need as much sleep from him as we can get!

Look, Ma, No Hands!

Some lucky little boy capitalized on REI's weekend sale and scored himself an iBert front-riding, neon green, steering-wheel-having bike seat.  Maceo took Nick out for a ride in his new seat. 

Nick will use the seat to take Maceo to and from daycare in the summer, logging major victories in the eco-friendly habits war and trying to compensate for the fact that we don't own a Prius.  We'll also use the new seat for lots of family trips to the new neighborhood pool we joined for the summer. 

As you can see, someone liked it.  A lot.

Was that fun for you, Poppa?

Look, Ma, no hands!

Weeeeeeeeee!

 

The boys

Monsieur Frankenstein, I presume

 Maceo is now 13 months old and based on some semantics, I can't, with a clear conscience, say he's walking.  Is he practicing his Frankenstein impression on a semi-frequent basis? Why, yes, yes he is.  Will at some point he morph from the monster into the (walking) maniac and will I, at that point, regret wishing for a little more walking these days?  Yes, yes I will.  So be it.  Until that point in time, we bring you:  Monsieur Maceo Frankenstein, defiant 13 month old who refuses to walk on command, loves to ignore his mother, and  who likes to have his defiance filmed for the world to witness.    Can you see him ignoring me?  It hurts, it hurts so much....

Chillin' by the pool

This past Sunday, we were invited by Abby (14 months old), and of course, her keepers and our friends Bridget and Jason, to come play in her inflatable pool complete with an inflatable slide!  Abby had Maceo at "inflatable."  Maceo came, he saw, and he owned that inflatable slide.  We present you with the evidence.