MONKEY

I'm sleeplessly sad about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. I couldn't sleep last night after watching a Dateline special. I had to turn it off when they started a story about a family whose infant son was taken away from them to a hospital somewhere else for treatment, while they remained behind in the devastation. It's just too much. Thank goodness we have this bouncing little distraction around to help keep our minds off the disaster. Here are some udpates on his recent behavioral developments:

The almost-one-year old has recently morphed into a monkey. Can you say ...

CLIMBING???

ON EVERYTHING???

I can!

The picture above shows just one of his newest tricks. It's called Table Swing with Head Tilt.

Other recent tricks include ...

1. Taking a tee-niney step un-aided while Dad held a ball just out of reach.

2. Frequently crawling in circles around whoever is sitting on the floor in search of forbidden items. He learned that we hide things behind our backs and so now he does the crawl around checking method just to see what's there.

3. Ejecting tapes from the VCR and pushing them back in and ejecting them again AD INFINITUM.

4. Squats. We've moved on from upper body workouts with weights to a focus on the lower body. This involves standing up and then bouncing/squatting repeatedly. It's fun! Really! You should try it!

5. Dropping everything and then peering over the ___________ (fill in any number of things ... high chair, crib, bed, car seat) to see where it has landed. This is particularly fun to do at nap time. The bunny, the blanket, the teddy bears, they ALL go over the side of the crib. This provokes a screaming fit until someone comes to retrieve the fallen object and then the game begins again. The tricky part is that he has trouble settling down without these items, yet he throws them out. A conundrum for sure.

I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend despite the national tragedy. Tonight The Goose and I will be solo while dad goes to a minor league baseball game with the other rangers to show off the birds of prey and snakes. Fun, fun for everyone!

Lots of love to all from ...
The Geese