Little wine lover

This evening we had a picnic dinner at a local park. Well, James and I ate - Augie just ran around. Mostly with a wine bottle.

He was fascinated with the corkscrew after I opened the wine, so he spent several minutes trying to reopen the bottle:

Then he ran away:

Then he came back for the wine:

And ran away with it:

Eventually he came back and I had at least four seconds of cuddle time...:

 ...before he ran away again:

My clowns

We met friends at a local pool for dinner and a swim this evening.

These two:

From the other side of a window display:

Finger painting

I have to admit, sheepishly, that I haven't been very proactive about doing arty stuff with Augie. It just sort of slips my mind - all the time.

But today I had the inspiration to pull out the finger paints and a dabbing brush and see how he'd react. He remained interested and focused for longer than I thought he would (probably because a bowl of water was involved). He asked what the colors were and repeated the names when we told him. He was more interested in splashing in the water and mixing the colors together in their containers than he was in putting paint on paper, but we weren't in it for a product. It was fun enough watching him explore.

Swimming with Baba

Sorry for the lack of posts recently; not a lot going on, I haven't been taking pictures, we're all exhausted. Augie had a shot this morning and has been in a terrible mood most of the day; here's hoping tomorrow's better.

This is the only thing that made him happy today:

Morning bagel

We went to Small World coffee again this morning to meet friends. Augie enjoyed a bagel before we went to the playground.

Getting settled in for the USA - Portugal match. Can you believe that game? 

Perfect summer day, part 2

To finish our perfect summer day, In the afternoon, we met our friends Linden, Malin and Kristin at the canal, where we rented kayaks and set out to see some turtles.

Linden!

It wasn't long into our trip before Augie reached over to feel the water. He spent most of the ride in this position:

 

Our traveling companions:

Augie got bored soon enough, and tried climbing out of the kayak into the water. There was some crying and some scrambling, so we turned back. As soon as we got him on the dock, he tried to climb back into the kayak.

 Then we all went for ice cream, where these two played on the cellar door:

(In case you missed it, click here to see the first post about today).

Perfect summer day, part 1

We had a great summer day today - it was warm but not too hot, we got out to play twice, we saw friends and family, and we even got some work done. I'm going to split today into two posts.

Uncle Robert spent the night last night, though he arrived after Augie went to bed so it wasn't until this morning that Augie found him asleep on the couch. I'll fix that! Augie thought as he attempted to stuff Rob's mouth with food and hit him on the head with books (sorry, no pictures).

We all went out to coffee and breakfast and then met friends at a park.

We came home to do some chores:

And then we went canoeing! See the next post for pictures of our water adventure.

Quiet days

Not much to report here. James was gone for a few days so I defaulted into survival mode and haven't been taking pictures or staying up late. Augie continues to talk up a storm, touch people on the nose, and make noises of astonishment while watching the World Cup, sometimes at appropriate moments.

Eating toast with homemade strawberry jam:

Coming home from school:

Wee Quee

Yesterday, when I picked Augie up from the child care room at the gym, the woman who supervises the room told me that she'd had a great afternoon with Augie. There weren't many other kids there so she was able to spend a lot of one-on-one time with him. She said he came and sat on her lap for a bit - a big breakthrough for him with someone other than us. And then, as we were leaving, he grabbed a toy colander and put it on his head and said, "Hat!". Haley, the supervisor, said, "What a nice hat, August!", and he walked over to her and put it on her head, then laughed like crazy when it fell off. Little joker...

When I picked him up from his Montessori preschool this morning, Ruth, the woman who runs it, said that he had actually sat down with her to do a lesson! She was very impressed that he's gone from wandering around the area and touching and playing with everything, never focused, to sitting down quietly with her. And he sat at the table during snacktime for twenty minutes! I use exclamation points twice in this paragraph because this is so rare and exciting; Augie never stops moving, and I'd say that he's focus-challenged, so I love to hear these reports. I told her that his vocab has increased tremendously since beginning with her, and she said that she thought he was trying to say "blue" that morning - which he started working on yesterday when he was home with him (he was also working on orange. To be clear, "blue" means blue or green, and his word for orange means red, orange, or yellow). But it's cool that someone other than me can understand what he's saying.

On the home front, he decided to be really cute this evening. He was having red grapes for a snack, and he'd take two out of the bowl, one in each hand, and run to me and shout, "Two!". He wouldn't eat them until I acknowledged, "Yes, August, you have two grapes," and then he'd give me a big smile and stuff them both in his mouth. (Yes, we prefer he not eat two grapes at once. But I'm not the type of mother to dole them out one-by-one).  He does something similar in the morning: when I wake up, I have him help me turn on the two living room lights. As soon as they are both on, he stands between them and shouts, "Two!", arms outstretched to point at them both. And this evening he sat on the glider/rocking chair in the living room, rocking back and forth as far and fast as he could (which is pretty far) and shouting, "Rock! Rock! Rock!". When I acknowledged that he was rocking, he gave me a satisfied smile. It's his first verb.

Totally unrelated picture:

But this post is about wee Queequeg. I had a midwife appointment this morning and we did an ultrasound, because last time the baby wasn't positioned properly to see all the anatomy, so they wanted to check out the spine today. The baby gave us some good shots.

That's definitely the thumper of a football star!