9 months old!

Here is Simon crawling around a bit on his 9 months birthday.  We call this the inside-out day, because the baby has been out of the womb the same amount of time as inside.  Funny to think that he's really a year and half old, if you count from conception.

The power had been out earlier in the evening, so Alice's green flashlight was still out.  She had been closely guarding it from him, but here he finds it unattended.  He ended up playing with it for a long time.

Two Easter bunnies

It's been fun this year initiating Alice into the holiday traditions.  With Easter approaching, she is learning quick.  After seeing the Easter Bunny at Bond Park, she and Zac saw another one at the grocery store on Sunday.  Zac reports that Alice was afraid of the Krogers Easter Bunny.

We explained that the Easter Bunny will come at night on Friday when she is sleeping and hide eggs all around the house.  It's really hard to say such ridiculous nonsense with a straight face.  I mean, who came up with this stuff?  Anyway, because she's young, it all makes perfect sense to her.  So after her nap on Sunday afternoon, (which, it should be noted, was achieved with the help of a bribe of 4 M&Ms if she actually slept), she reported that she didn't see the Easter bunny.  Same thing when she woke up Monday morning.  Because she doesn't have a good concept of time, in her mind the bunny can come any time she is sleeping.  Tonight, after reading her bedtime stories, she told me that the two Easter bunnies were going to come and hide eggs around the house.  I hadn't thought about it much, but it occurred to me then that instead of some vague, abstract, magical bunny, she is picturing the Bond Park Easter Bunny and the Kroger Easter Bunny.  I'm grateful that she is not scared to sleep at night, thinking of these creatures creeping around the house.

Pulling up

Now that Simon is crawling around, he is also starting to pull up.

He can pull up and stand on his knees all by himself.

Zac helped him to stand on his feet and look at the fish tank.  He is pretty wobbly like this.

In other Simon news, he has lots of teeth coming in.  His top two front teeth have come through, with at least three others in or very close.  It could be unrelated, but he's also had trouble putting himself to sleep for the past two days.  Normally, even when he wakes up in the middle of the night, I can just nurse him and put him back in his crib and he'll fall asleep on his own.  Tonight, I actually let him cry it out.  It wasn't the all out wailing, I can't handle that, but it was intermittent crying.  I figured it was better to have him re-learn to put himself to sleep at 7:30pm than try it at 4 am.

Colors

On the one hand...

We were playing outside with kids this morning, and Zac found a beetle in the yard.  Alice asked if she could hold it, so he gave it to her.  She was very happy holding it and carrying it around, at one point declaring, "I have a beetle in this hand, and I need a bumble bee in my right hand!"  We explained to her that one does not carry around bumble bees.  Also, she doesn't quite know her right hand from her left with 100% accuracy yet, but she's getting the idea.  In this case, she happened to be right.

So, she was really happy until I poked the beetle and it came to life and started crawling up her arm.  Then she screamed in terror for a few seconds until it fell off.  It should be noted that neither parent intervened to rescue her from the beetle.

Last ride

It was a beautiful day, so I took Alice to the neighborhood park while Simon was napping.  She always rides her bike there, but there is a shortcut through the woods between two houses where I have to carry the bike.  The bike is quite heavy, actually, so it's annoying to carry around.  Before leaving, I told Zac I thought I'd just leave it at the entrance to the path.  We never see anyone there, and what were the chances someone would steal it in the hour at the park?

We rode to the park, and I put the bike along the fence.  Alice played happily at the park, and about 20 minutes later, Zac walked over with Simon.  He said the bike was fine when he came.

Well, as fate would have it, some miscreant did touch the bike.  When we left the park and went down the path to get it, it had been tossed on its side on the other side of the fence.  We picked it up, but when Alice tried to ride it, something wasn't right, and soon the chain came off.  Our guess is some teenagers came across it and tried to ride it and broke it because they were too big.  Zac was unable to fix it, so we'll probably look for another one on Craiglist.

I was mad, not because the bike was expensive or particularly special (it was a third-hand bike we got for free) but it just bugs me that we couldn't leave it unattended for an hour without someone breaking it.

Eggs and Art

Saturday, we planned to do a double: a morning and afternoon activity.  Bond Park was having their annual Easter Egg Hunt and the Art Museum was having a family fun day, too.

First, Bond Park.  We did the egg hunt last year, and thought it was rather ridiculous, but nevertheless, felt compelled to go again this year.  It's not really a hunt--just more of a scramble as a gazillion kids, coaxed by their hovering parents, run onto a baseball field scattered with eggs and candy, grabbing as much as they can.  All the goodies are usually gathered within three minutes.

Zac started coaching Alice on strategy the day before.  He told her to run to the end of the field were there weren't any other children, and start gathering eggs there.  Before bed that night, I asked Alice if she knew what we were going to do the next morning.  She said, "Gather Easter Eggs!  They're going to say 'go' and then I run and run."   The next morning, as we were finishing breakfast, I suggested Alice practice by using her blue produce basket to gather all the plastic fruits and vegetables that were scattered around the living room floor.  Zac decided to make it a more specific task, and he put all the fruits and vegetables at one end, and dropped a strawberry in the middle of the floor.  Then he took Alice behind the floor towel, said that was the line, like what she'd have to wait behind at the start of the easter egg hunt.  Then he said, "Go!" Alice ran right to the strawberry.  Zac intervened and said, "No, no!  That's your first mistake!  You're supposed to go to the other area where more of the items are.  Now, let's start over."  At this point, Alice burst into tears.  The poor girl couldn't handle the intense training regime.  In the debriefing/consoling session that followed, she revealed that she was sad because she wanted to pick up that strawberry.  I decided to switch the emphasis of the training towards making sure she knew she shouldn't grab eggs from the other kids and that she should just have fun.

Once at the egg hunt, when the Easter Bunny said go, she had a moment of panic and didn't do anything.  After a minutes of being clingy, she got the hang of it and gathered the candy and eggs off the field.  I remember last year being surprised at how many of the kids immediately put the candy in their mouths after the gathering was done, but this year, Alice was one of those kids.

Alice and the crowd gathering candy and eggs.

Examining the candy

She decided she needed two lollipops at once.

Sere showing Alice how to make bunny ears

Alice went down the bouncy slide for the first time ever.  She was so proud of herself afterwards, beaming and jumping up and down and saying, "I did it!" But she didn't want to do it again.  Instead, she wanted to go on the bouncy castle, but there was a long line, so I said we'd come back later.  When we came back later, the line was shorter, but when it was finally her turn, she chickened out.

They had a fire truck for kids to climb in.  Alice went for the purple medical gloves right away.

Next, we went home for a quick lunch, then out to the art museum.  They had several stations where kids could do some art, which Alice loved.  I think because they do art projects at daycare, she feels right at home sitting at a table working on stuff.

For the outdoor mural, Zac was shocked to find they were using house paint (he expected some child-safe, washable paint).  Alice did pretty good though, only getting a bit on her shirt and hands.  The painting was supposed to be a life-size paint by number, but Alice (like many other kids) had her own artistic interpretation.  She could not have been happier.

One of the exhibits was on storybook illustrations

Simon also enjoyed looking at the art

Outside the museum, we saw Anna, one of Alice's friends from daycare, and they played in the fountain together.

They enjoyed making footprints on the concrete with their wet feet.

All in all, it was a fun-filled beautiful day.

A snowman with hair

Alice draws a lot, but it is mainly scribbles.  After drawing this, she came and showed me.  When I asked what it was, she said it was a "snowman with hair."  It is the first thing that actually looks like what she said it was.

First finger food

We thought we'd have Simon try some finger food.  I can't exactly remember what we gave Alice first, but I thought it was puffs.  Here's how it went with Simon:

Simon on the move

Simon is crawling around a bit more these days.

He will happily explore the living room for a long time now, getting into wires and anything that is new or not officially a baby toy.  He also tries to go out the porch door whenever it is left open.

Duke Gardens

On Sunday, we went to Duke Gardens.  We weren't sure how many of the flowers would be in bloom yet, but it turned out that the gardens were lovely and the day was beautiful.  Alice loves being outside; she likes to climb on everything and touch everything.

Alice likes to make her own path through the woods.

One giant leap for mankind

Alice loves dipping her hands in water and making hand prints.

Wherever there are fish or fowl to be fed, Alice quickly makes friends with anyone who has food.

 

She must climb every fence she sees.

She imagined the center of this flower sculpture was dinosaur eggs, so we were sitting on them.

Simon's al fresco dining

Sometimes Alice needs to pretend she is a kitty cat and walk on all fours.

More hand prints.  She played here for a long time.