Cape Cod-part 2

Saturday, our second day in Dennis, Reed and I had another nice long morning walk and brought home awesome donuts from town. We spent the morning at Scargo Lake's Princess Beach, a freshwater lake with a sandy beach. The boys got to know some very friendly (aggressive?) ducks who were clearly accustomed to getting handouts from little people.

Cape Cod-Part 1

Last weekend we spent three full days (and two half days of traveling) in Cape Cod visiting my cousin Debbie, her husband Tom, and my cousin Kelly. Kelly's boyfriend Jim was there too, and it was really nice to meet him after hearing so much about him. Their home is beautiful and just perfect for them and for us to visit, and there was lots for us to do. 

On day one Reed and I went for a nice walk in the morning and then Kelly and Jim and I took the boys to the playground. In the late afternoon we hit Mayflower Beach in Dennis for Tom's favorite time, low tide. The boys of course ran headlong into the water and loved splashing and swimming around. Tom raced the boys on the beach. Kelly and Jim and Deb all had time with Reed, who needed some adjustment time to the feel of the sand on his feet while he walked.

Developmental update

Reed (almost 16 months): walking well, occasionally running, can go up and down stairs with amazing ease and speed. Still sometimes crawls to get somewhere fast. Talks a lot: ball, up, out, hat, down, walk, bottle (as in water bottle), num-nums (as in breastfeeding), eat, mama, dada, book, milk, dessert ("sert"), fork ("fuck"), car, penis are just the ones I can think of quickly. He understands so so many more than that. I can really have a conversation now where I understand what he wants to do. He loves to take walks and the way he tells us that is that he walks over to where the Ergo baby carrier is hanging on the coat rack, and tugs on it while saying "walk". He also loves stroller rides but is not a fan of his car seat. He mostly eschews baby toys but loves playing with his big brothers' cars, trucks, airplanes, and markers (markers often go in the mouth). Reed just started at daycare this week and seems to be doing well there. He's going through something of a sleep regression at home, waking up frequently and seeming unsettled, but he has like six teeth breaking through slowly so it's hard to fault him.

Theo (5): just finished up a five-week-long Irish Dance for beginners class, once a week. He loved observing the class before we signed up but then was sometimes reticent about actually going. Once there he loved putting on his dance shoes and joining the other students to learn the steps. After finishing the last class, he asked when he could do it again, which confounds me given how much complaining/refusing he did during the session he did. Wonders about existential issues like why there are people in public places and asks questions I do not even begin to understand. Enjoys drawing and coloring. Theo tends to be more conciliatory and say things that are kind or even bordering on condescending, especially when directed to Beckett or us, like congratulating us on moving our game piece forward in CandyLand or throwing our trash away. He also seems to get over relatively minor inconveniences or misfortunes easier than Beckett, though he has a harder time just asking for what he wants and instead often takes the very long road of complaining about something to no one in particular and saying he wishes things were different and then looking meaningfully at me like, if only you had the power to change this, mama.

Beckett: is getting bored at home after a summer of mostly unstructured time. He does so well in a teacher-student relationship at school or at home, and he can be my most helpful and cooperative buddy around the house or doing things together, especially if he is on his own and not with Theo. His vocabulary is vast and he loves to figure out the meaning of new words. Beckett has been more hesitant about writing and coloring lately. We think that Theo has told Beckett that Beckett is not as good at coloring/drawing than he is, and that this has made Beckett embarrassed about his abilities as compared to Theo. He does not like to compete and lose. Beckett also just lost the first tooth of the family, as a result of a fall. The tooth came clear out, and he was visited by the tooth fairy.

Here and there lately we've been finding the boys sleeping together. They rarely start out in the same bed, but it's happened a couple times in the last week that we've gone in to check on them when we go to bed and they are in the same bed, cuddled together. This is Beckett in the pink nightgown and Theo with his arm around Beckett's neck. This time they were in Theo's bed, but the other time they were in Beckett's bed. It's very sweet!

This is Mama and Reed before we hit the water for a record breaking two hour float. It was hot and muggy and the only place that felt good was in the water. I tied a rope around Reed's belly and then put him in this float and tied the other end of the rope to my float. It was a little windy so every few minutes I had to paddle us back in front of the dock, trailing Reed behind. He just chilled for two hours. It must have felt good to have his feet dangling in the water. Joan and Stu joined us on their own floats, and Theo and Beckett swam around and did lots of jumping off the dock and playing tag in the water.

Saturday the boys went to a Hangar Theatre Kiddstuff play with Daddy and Grandma Joanie, then we floated and swam most of the afternoon before celebrating Mama's birthday with corndogs and icebox cake Saturday night. Sunday morning we got to catch up with Cousin Diane, who was in town for a high school reunion. Then later Sunday Theo and Mama went to the Museum of the Earth (a bust) and Beckett and Daddy went to the Sciencenter.

You can tell Theo is kind of over it before we even went into the Museum. We probably should have just gone in, looked at the right whale skeleton, smooshed our pennies in the crank machine, and then jetted to get ice cream.

They didn't really have a lot that a five year old could appreciate. We spent probably 10 minutes looking for fossils in a couple big buckets of shale from Lansing, which was kind of neat and I was amazed that Theo had that much patience but the fossils were small and it wasn't easy to see them under the light because the stool and position of the light weren't made for little bodies and hands. There was also kind of a lame section with a couple crap dinosaur costume parts (see above) and some hard plastic dinosaur models (snooze). We made up for it by going raspberry picking and then buying peaches and blueberries at Indian Creek Farm up the road. Though the raspberry picking was a little sparse--4 for Theo and 2 for me.

Watching Olympics!

This is what Friday looked like at the House of Lovebo. Women's soccer, some swimming, some handball. Beckett was very sad that the women's soccer team lost. There was crying. And a baby in a pot, again, for good measure.