Muscle Man

Muscle man with demon eyes, in this one. The kid is stacked. Does this look like a kid not fourteen months yet? He is an exercise machine. He likes to pile up chairs and push a line of them around the room. He delights in moving heavy objects. He likes to do that funny high-kneed football practice run, and he likes to practice running sideways and backwards.

We are having a lot of fun with Robyn and Dan, and they are spoiling all three of us rotten. Saturday we went to the big flea market at Clignancourt, and wandered through some of the sections there. We came back and had lunch in Centreville; then GrandRobyn took us toy and clothes shopping at our favorite local places. He was desperately in need of larger pyjamas, and now he has them! And a raft of new hoodies, too. Plus some great toys. He got a big box of plain wooden blocks that he has barely let out of his grasp since. The box is as much fun as the blocks, but the blocks are quite good indeed. That night he insisted on taking a block to bed with him.

Since we have kind of caved on the no videos till age two thing, we have set up rules: only on the computer, so no commercials and no just watching what's on, and only watching with us while we talk to him about it--no video babysitter. That's as much his rule as ours, though it is an important one for us--he won't look at it for two seconds without us there with him. In any case, he's been watching Word World and we've just downloaded him the Planet Earth series, which he LOVES. He had a huge grin on his face all through the part we let him watch this morning.

Robyn and Dan have been having a bit of a rough adjustment, what with jet lag and getting used to a train system that is completely outside of their experience, and with a complete language barrier. They've done quite admirably, but it has been stressful, so they slept in this morning, which was probably the best thing for them. We missed our Sunday Seine walk, but we had lunch with them and took Tristram to the farm weekend.

All the animals had babies in our absence! There were nine kids, two who were clearly (from both their own and their mothers' states of cleanliness and shaky legs) very newly born. There were four lambs and a new calf. No pigs yet, but they'll probably be there next month. Tristram spent a lot of time trying to feed the animals, and then trying to climb in to pet them. When we finally found a goat close enough to the fence to pet, though, he patted it three times, stood up, and ran off as if to say "I'm done!" Goal achieved, apparently. He still likes the rabbits best, and the cows are second best now. I'm not getting him a cow. A dog of course, cats await us in California, as does a horse, I'd gladly have a goat but Jonathan has vetoed it, I'd have a rabbit and probably Jonathan could be persuaded, but we are both standing firm on the cow.