On Saturday mornings, Darrick and I take Alexander to a Parks and Rec class called Little Movers and Shakers. It's in a gymnastics room with lots of different kinds of mats (including tunnel mats), balance beams, springboards, and so on. We do some group activities, stretching, pretending to be bears, hopping, playing with the parachute, and singing songs, but much of the time, he just bounces around like a pinball, there's so much to see and do, especially during toy-and-ball free-for-all. Last Saturday, this was pretty much his demeanor the whole time.



He sampled the stuffed fish:




Demonstrated his gymnastics skills for the ladies:



Showed random people his tongue:



Commanded bubbles to pop:



And exhausted himself.



It was a good time.

Tunnel Vision

A series of quick movies (our camera doesn't take more than 30 seconds at a time) of Alexander dancing to his little drum set's beats and scratching, then playing in his tunnel. Sorry these are so dark.

In at least one, I'm clearly pressuring the boy to dance, but only because I started taking the photos when Alexander was dancing his fool head off. Once I started filming, of course, he pretty much lost interest in dancing.









And yet another attempt to catch him in the act dancing. Yes, a tornado did hit the room.



And Darrick taught him to blow a kiss:



We also have some photos from the Parks and Rec class we take him to, so I'll have those up tomorrow, maybe.

Random Alexander

Alexander loves playing with CD players, VCRs (yes, we still have one of these relics--a couple, actually), DVD players, radios, microwaves, and clocks. In our bedroom, we have old VHS tapes with movies taped off cable years ago. He likes to put these tapes in the VCR and start them. The TV isn't on, so they don't really "play," but sometimes at night I'll wake up to the sound of the tape rewinding after playing for 8 hours.

In his room, we have no closet door, so we put up a baby gate to keep him from pulling the CD player on top of him. Well, he didn't take long to figure out how to climb it so he can perch on top and mess with the CD player. It's an old-style gate that probably isn't made anymore because it's obviously easy to climb (lots of little holes for little toes). Anyway, the other night while we were getting him ready for bed, we put on a CD with mostly slow songs. He proceeded to climb the gate and actually switch that CD for another one (switching, closing the top, and hitting play), a mixed CD I made for mornings. The first song is "Rock Around the Clock."

I think he was trying to tell us something about bedtime.

He's also been exploring his artistic side. He loves to color. It's crazy how into it he gets.



Here, he seems to be lamenting the temporary loss of his muse. Drama queen.




And last Friday, he charmed the hell out of the firefighters at the park. They were there playing soccer. We run into them occasionally because they go to play games, exercise, and test their equipment using the hydrant. One week, they tested the hose from the top of the ladder, power spraying the whole park. It was so cool. Anyway, last Friday, they suggested we come by on Saturday (the station is right behind our house), because they pull all the trucks out of the garage and test the ladder. So we headed over. Alexander didn't care for sitting in the truck, but he loved splashing in the puddles created from washing the trucks, and he really enjoyed looking at the enormous tires.

New Bedtime Routine

The boy has started a new bedtime routine. He takes every book off his shelf, every toy in his room, every scrap of paper, and bit by bit, puts it all in his crib. He gives us a few books for us to read to him, but the rest goes into the crib. Then we read until he falls asleep, and we quietly take everything out of the crib and put him down. He's very serious about this routine. We've tried blocking him with our bodies to see if he'd give up because it's too difficult, but he scales us with his books. Determined and very weird.

Grandpa Ed

My dad came for a long weekend visit, so of course we had to go to the park.



We also spent a very hot afternoon at Traildust Town, which apparently doesn't open until the evening, although the town itself is open before the restaurants and shops, so Alexander had a blast exploring and making some money telling fortunes, all along the lines of "momma daddy booka cheetah kitty dog" or, more likely, a simple "ga." And eerily, all his predictions came true!






We're not sure if this guy works here or if he just likes to dress up like a cowboy and walk his dog here, but he was a nice fellow anyway, and Alexander loved his dog.




Before leaving, Alexander did the obligatory posing:





As always, more photos on our flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mallons/

Zoo!

A couple of weeks ago, Darrick took some vacation days so that I could get full days of work in. On one of those days, he took Alexander to the zoo.

Here he is admiring his gorilla cup.


And appreciating the giraffe's unique take on snack time.



Having his own snack nonchalantly, while mere feet from the rhino.



Enjoying the zoo's water area (this is a blogger video instead of a google video--does it show up better for you all?):



We have lots more zoo pictures and other photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/mallons/

Parks and Puddles

Alexander has had some good times at the park, sometimes with his friend Lauren, sometimes with his dad, sometimes with his mom, sometimes when he sneaks out at night on secret park missions.



He's even gone hiking.



And, ahem, swimming(?)

Happy Independence Day!

OK, so I'm a wee bit behind on the posts. On top of the usual work marathon, I took on an extra book from a new, prestigious client. I didn't want to turn down the opportunity because I might not have gotten another call, not until I could prove my work, which I did. Woo hoo! So now I'm catching up on the blogging, and rather than doing one long super post, I'll inundate you with several shorter ones, beginning with our Fourth of July fun at the Brokaws. This was the last day off I had until today.

Adventures in Babyproofing

Alexander takes babyproofing as a challenge. He easily figured out how to pull the outlet covers from the sockets. He brings them to us, beaming.

He's also figured out how to move chairs around so he can climb on tables, open drawers in the kitchen, and pull the coffee pot from the coffee maker (fortunately a cold pot we hadn't emptied yet). I'm sure you'll agree that the coffee really adds a certain something to the decor:



You might have also noticed how well the cabinet lock has worked for us. Here's a closer look at how Alexander is working his away around that little babyproofing device:



Oh, and here's what's left of the device that was supposed to keep him from opening the oven door:



Now, I know what you're thinking: Keep this kid out of the kitchen, right? And it just so happens that we have a big gate to keep him in the family room. Well, we had a big gate. First he tore it from the wall.



Then he actually broke the gate itself:



I'm thinking maybe we contact the manufacturer about this one. Seems to me, a baby just shouldn't be able to break their gate, am I right? Pulling it out of the wall, well, that's probably faulty mounting. The wall is concrete, and that's surprisingly difficult to mount into, and so enough persistent shaking of the gate eventually crumbled the concrete. In retrospect, we can see a better way to mount it, but that doesn't help much now.

I finally figured out a way to babyproof the laptop, to make it so he could press all the keys and they wouldn't do anything but make funny noises. So we let him at it one day:



The problem, of course, is that I couldn't lock the touchpad and its buttons as well as the keys. So I come back in the room to find him opening Microsoft Outlook, checking my business e-mail. Apparently, he even sent a chat message to our friend Jennifer.

So what can we do but keep him busy? While Darrick fixed dinner, he kept him occupied with stirring the juice. Alexander took the task quite seriously.



We can also get some peace while he plays endlessly with the water dispenser on the fridge. Here, he's mighty thirsty after shooting an episode of COPS.



Oh, and we put the piano bench in my office because he was using it to climb onto the keys, then on top of the piano. Now he uses his dad as a bench.



Seems that we need to keep him safe by taking him out of the house, so today, we tried yet another park. This one has a pool, which we'll go back to as soon as I get a suit.

So we decided to rearrange some furniture . . .

Before

After

What inspired this sudden burst of interior design genius?